Description
Book SynopsisEbook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative. In this book Michele Speitz assembles the first full-length scholarly study of the British Romantic technological sublime, addressing a significant gap in scholarship on Romantic literature, technological aesthetics, and the history of science and technology. Speitz shows that it is through a study of technology, and by putting British Romanticism's representations of sublime nature and technology in dialogue, that the broader history and present-day implications of the British Romantic sublime can best be understood. This innovative study foregrounds representations of Romantic machines and tools both aged and new: from the lever and the teacup to modern marvels including the steam engine and the seismograph. Surveyed as well are built environments and vast mechanical and infrastructural systems: mines, canal works, roadways, modern suspension bridges. By grouping together this set of ancient