British Literature and Technology, 1600-1830

KRISTIN M. GIRTEN is an associate professor of English and assistant vice chancellor for the arts and humanities at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research focuses on intersections between literature, philosophy, and science in the British Enlightenment and in the twenty-first century, giving special emphasis to how women and other marginalized groups contribute to and feel the effects of such intersections.AARON R. HANLON is an associate professor of English and chair of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He is the author of A World of Disorderly Notions: Quixote and the Logic of Exceptionalism.

"This collection is full of superb scholarship that makes substantial contributions to our understanding of technology." (Technology and Culture) “By focusing exclusively on humanity’s unruly tools, this book opens a compelling ‘mosaic’ view of technology that tiles together everything from the wiles of Jacobean stagecraft to the terza rima utopias of Romantic poets (10). . . . The essays gathered in British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 will hold broad interest for . . . anyone-critic, teacher, student-seeking tools to comprehend human intervention in the world.” (Eighteenth-Century Fiction) "British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 has much to offer readers interested in the social history of technology and in literature and science studies more broadly." (Journal of British Studies) “In a series of wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and finely argued essays, this volume marks a major advance in studies of science and literature. By thinking about literature itself as a kind of technology, the collection represents interdisciplinary scholarship at its best.” - Jess Keiser (author of Nervous Fictions: Literary Form and the Enlightenment Origins of Neuroscience) “Innovative in concept, scope, and execution, Girten and Hanlon’s collection studies the rich interplay between literature and technology during the scientific revolution. Prefaced by a sophisticated introduction, this volume is necessary reading for students and scholars interested in literary studies, science, technology and society, and the history of science.” - Tita Chico (author of The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment)

• IntroductionKristin M. Girten and Aaron R. HanlonChapter 1: Webster’s Baroque Experiments and the Testing of Technology in the Early 1600sLaura FrancisChapter 2: Telling Time in the Fiction of Mary Hearne and Daniel DefoeErik L. JohnsonChapter 3: The Technology and Theatricality of Three Hours after Marriage’s “Touch-Stone of Virginity”Thomas A. OldhamChapter 4: Gulliver’s Travels, Automation, and the Reckoning AuthorZachary M. MannChapter 5: Designing the Enlightenment AnthropoceneKevin MacDonnellChapter 6: Technology, Temporality, and Queer Form in Horace Walpole’s GothicEmily M. WestChapter 7: Telegraphic Supremacy in Maria Edgeworth’s “Lame Jervas”Deven M. ParkerChapter 8: Percy Shelley, Political Machines, and the Pre-History of the Post-LiberalJamison KantorAfterword: On the Uses of the History of Technology for Literary Studies and Vice VersaJoseph DruryBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex