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razishiri 's review for:
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
Hard Times is to Dickens novels as A Comedy of Errors is to Shakespeare plays. It's a solid example of the genre, with all the requisite components--a sweet and virtuous orphan, the drama of someone's uncertain parentage, moralizing, a lovable character with a speech impediment, a treatise on the plight of the underclass, sly asides to the reader, and more moralizing. It's very good, if you love Dickens (which I do), but it probably shouldn't be counted among his greatest works.
Hard Times is Dickens' critique of the Industrial Revolution, a backlash against the philosophy of Utilitarianism and hyper-rationality that came with it, and an impassioned defense of the Novel as a way to enrich the spiritual lives of the people. I was originally assigned this book in a seminar on "practical wisdom," a philosophy that aims for a nuanced and emotional approach to making ethical judgments, rather than a rigid rules-based model of morality.
Hard Times is Dickens' critique of the Industrial Revolution, a backlash against the philosophy of Utilitarianism and hyper-rationality that came with it, and an impassioned defense of the Novel as a way to enrich the spiritual lives of the people. I was originally assigned this book in a seminar on "practical wisdom," a philosophy that aims for a nuanced and emotional approach to making ethical judgments, rather than a rigid rules-based model of morality.