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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until December 16, 2024

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Winging It: Human Flight in the Long Eighteenth Century

Jones, Jared
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6912-7144
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1565963832584991

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
Although the first balloon flights in 1783 created a sensation throughout Europe, human flight had long captured the imaginations of scientific and literary authors alike. Prior histories of flight begin with balloons, but earlier centuries boasted a strange and colorful aviary that shaped thinking about flight long before the first balloon ever left the ground. Taking a cultural materialist approach informed by a broad familiarity with the development of early flight machines and a deep familiarity with the literary conventions of the period, I analyze historical materials ranging from aeronautical treatises to stage pantomimes, from newspaper advertisements to philosophical poems, from mechanical diagrams to satirical cartoons. This earlier culture possessed high hopes and anxieties about human flight. I argue that early flight was lively and varied before the invention of a successful flying machine, and that these early flights were important because they established an aerial tradition astonishingly resistant to change. Rather than revolutionizing the culture, ballooning was quickly incorporated into it. Although ballooning came to be regarded as a failure by many onlookers, the aerial tradition had long become accustomed to failure and continued unabated. Human flight has always promised tremendous and yet debatable utility, a paradox that continues into the present age.
Roxann Wheeler (Advisor)
David Brewer (Committee Member)
Sandra Macpherson (Committee Member)
Jacob Risinger (Committee Member)
333 p.
Aeronomy; Aerospace Engineering; American Literature; Astronomy; British and Irish Literature; Comparative Literature; Engineering; European History; European Studies; Experiments; Folklore; Foreign Language; Germanic Literature; History; Language; Literature; Mechanical Engineering; Museums; Philosophy of Science; Physics; Science History; Technology; Theater; Theater History; World History
eighteenth century; flight; literature; science; aeronautics; Restoration; early modern; Romanticism; Wilkins; Cavendish; Shadwell; Behn; Blake; Shelley; Royal Society; sylph; folklore; Swift; Montgolfier; Katterfelto; pantomime; Dibdin; balloon; wing

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jones, J. (2019). Winging It: Human Flight in the Long Eighteenth Century [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1565963832584991

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jones, Jared. Winging It: Human Flight in the Long Eighteenth Century. 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1565963832584991.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jones, Jared. "Winging It: Human Flight in the Long Eighteenth Century." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1565963832584991

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1565963832584991
© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.