“古老快乐的英格兰”守望者——从《骑马乡行记》看威廉·科贝特对英国工业时代的批判

19世纪的英国社会经历了被称为“工业革命”的大变革，工业革命不仅意味着经济的巨大增长，而且意味着社会的整体变动。生活在这一时期的威廉·科贝特目睹了工业革命的复杂变迁和给乡村及城镇带来的极大变化。他敏锐地观察到物质文明高度发展的英国，社会矛盾也相当突出。科贝特办报撰文，针砭时政，宣传议会改革，尤其用13年的时间对不列颠岛进行了全面考察，并用期刊随笔的形式发表了系列文章，后汇集成著名的《骑马乡行记》。《骑马乡行记》反映了19世纪初英国社会尤其是乡村农业生活的流弊，对这一时期英国的社会问题进行了揭示和批判，他的文字中常常出现“古老快乐的英格兰”，流露出对工业革命前英国社会的守望和眷念，反映出工业化来临后英国文人对现实的不适和调整。

Abstract：

In the 19th century, Great changes typically called ＂the industrial revolution＂ took place in British. It means not only the tremendous growth in the economy, but also the overall social changes. Living in this century, William Cobbett witnessed the complex changes of the industrial society, and the influence of the industrial revolution to both the countryside and town. brought the development of material civilization as well He keenly observed that the industrial revolution had as many social contradictions in British. Cobbett sponsored newspapers and wrote lots of political papers, appealled to parliament reform, above all, took a comprehensive trip to investigate the British society for 13 years. He wrote down his experiences into the periodical informal essays, and collected and published them in 1830 as a book named Rural Rides which revealed the social problems of England in the early of 19th century. His words often occurred in those papers such as My old merry England, from which we can find his nostalgia to the pro - industrial society, an emotion typically among the contemporary British scholars.