Pandaemonium: Narratives of energy-system change in historical and literary perspective

This essay pursues two aims. First, it asks what insights Pandaemonium, Humphrey Jennings’ anthology of eyewitness accounts of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, gives into the processes and consequences of energy system change, and what significance these may have for the transition to renewable energy today. And secondly, it experiments with interdisciplinary collaboration between environmental history and literary ecocriticism, to see how examination of energy narratives from the perspective of the historian (traditionally concerned with processes of change, their causes and consequences, agents and objects), and from that of the literary critic (concerned principally with matters of aesthetics and form, ethics, and the framing of issues through cultural tropes) complement each other, and contribute to research in the environmental humanities.