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SUMMARY:Machines made out of words: Inaugural lecture with Professor John 
 Gardner - Prof John Gardner
DTSTART:20180531T173000Z
DTEND:20180531T183000Z
UID:TALK106309@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Miriam Berg
DESCRIPTION:Are literature and engineering connected together? This talk w
 ill focus on the interaction between literature\, politics and engineering
  in the early nineteenth century. Recent campaigns to put the Arts into ST
 EM to create STEAM have cited facts such as Nobel Laureates in the science
 s are 17 times more likely to also be painters and 12 times more to be poe
 ts. Connectivity between disciplines was readily apparent in the Romantic 
 period\, a time when mechanical engineering progressed most: ‘In 1775 th
 e machine tools at the disposal of industry had scarcely advanced beyond t
 hose available in the Middle Ages\; by 1850 the majority of modern machine
 -tools had been invented’ (Gilbert). \n\nPoets and novelists have long 
 expressed connections between engineering and literature: William Godwin w
 rote ‘Few engines can be more powerful\, and at the same time more salut
 ary in their tendency\, than literature.’ Percy Shelley was engaged in b
 uilding a boat engine\; Mary Shelley wrote in her journal: ‘Shelley read
 s Calderon\, and talks about the steam-engine’\; Thomas Love Peacock cha
 mpioned steam navigation\; James Joyce called himself the ‘one of the gr
 eatest Engineers’\, and William Carlos Williams wrote that ‘a poem is 
 a small (or large) machine made out of words’.\n\nThis talk will argue t
 hat literature and engineering share many aims\, and that these discipline
 s are related.\n\nJohn Gardner is Professor of English Literature at Angli
 a Ruskin University\, where he began working in 2004\, after studying\, th
 en teaching\, at the University of Glasgow. John has written a range of ar
 ticles on authors and topics in the fields of eighteenth and nineteenth ce
 ntury literature and culture\, and is the author of Poetry and Popular Pro
 test\; Peterloo\, Cato Street and the Queen Caroline Controversy (Palgrave
  Macmillan\, 2011).
LOCATION:Anglia Ruskin University\, East Road\, Cambridge CB1 1PT
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