British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 ed. by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 ed. by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon
• Al Coppola (bio)

British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 Edited by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2023. Pp. 216.

This volume collects eight articles exploring the relationship of literary texts and material realities, mostly in England, mainly during the long eighteenth century. Both of the editors and all of the contributors hold Ph.D.s in literature. So does the person who was asked to write this review. If only by virtue of these facts, this volume represents a provocation: What do a bunch of English professors have to contribute to the history of technology?

If you read the thoughtful introduction by Girten and Hanlon, and especially Joseph Drury's deft afterword, "On the Uses of the History of Technology for Literary Studies and Vice Versa," you'll get what strikes me as a darn good answer. The editors argue that some of the collected articles show how "literary and aesthetic considerations contributed to the development of material technologies, while in others, the textual treatment of technology impacted how people understood and engaged with it" (p. 10). As Drury writes, "Technologies are ways of doing things, not just ways of knowing. As such, they extend deep into the rhythms of everyday life in a way that is less often the case with scientific knowledge" (p. 164). Keying into the concept of affordance from design theory and the wealth of new formalist work in literary studies, which asserts that literary form "does things, it doesn't simply mean things" (p. 168), Drury argues that "textual analysis [as] practiced by literary scholars" is particularly suited to explore "one of the key insights of modern science and technology studies": that "the function of a technical artifact depends on the particular circumstances of its use" (p. 169). Attending to literary texts helps us investigate "imagined uses of technologies": showing us the futures that never came and the futures that yet might be, but also charting the widest circle of their reach. Not just the trials and tribulations of the innovators but also "those who may have never had any contact with a technology but were nonetheless powerfully affected by it" (p. 173).

Great collections contain solid chapters that make a meaningful contribution to their subject. In this regard, this collection is more than worthy, particularly insofar as the authors employ science and technology studies to deepen the scholarly conversation about their literary objects of study. Exceptional collections do all that while gathering a body of work that shares a unity of purpose and exemplifies the theoretical approach and critical [End Page 709] interventions outlined by the editors. This collection is not quite that kind of book, but I'm not sure it matters. Our understanding of the satire of Three Hours After Marriage is enriched by Thomas A. Oldman's discussion of contemporary obstetrics, but the value of this work doesn't lie in the insights it offers into the "function of a technical artifact." For the readers of Technology and Culture, the question of whether this collection consistently offers a contribution to the history and sociology of technology hinges on whether they buy the editors' contention that writing itself is a technology, "a tool that makes something happen," and thus a suitable object of study unto itself under this rubric.

In fact, this collection is full of superb scholarship that makes substantial contributions to our understanding of technology (no matter how stringently one defines it). I cite particularly Zachary Mann's rereading of the automatic writing machine in Gulliver's Travels in the context of contemporary automated textile manufacturing projects; Devin Parker's sprawling analysis of the fevered English response to the development of the optical telegraph in Revolutionary France, and the role that Maria Edgeworth's "Lame Jervas" played in imagining an English counterpart; and Kevin MacDowell's exploration of the eighteenth-century design contexts that influenced the sinuous line traced by the patented linkage that literally hooked up James Watt's steam engine to industry. As Drury puts it, these chapters' "shift in focus from innovation to use...