Dr Nina Engelhardt (University of Cologne / IASH Fellow): Bodies in Flight in Early Modern Literature: Literary Texts between Science and Flights of Fancy
This talk examines early modern texts on flight regarding their negotiations of scientific and fictional knowledge and regarding the depiction of bodies and minds in flight and their interrelations.
I introduce the topic and the momentous realisation of physical flight
- the first balloon ascent took place in 1783 - in reference to the British history of ballooning, which had its beginnings here in Edinburgh (even George Square features briefly). I then turn to the pre-history of flight, analysing an early modern 'science fiction'
text and a satire as literary examples that use flight to engage with relations between science and the imagination. Drawing on these texts, I address questions such as: How do literary negotiations of flight engage with scientific-technological developments? How do literary texts envision bodies and minds adept at flying? And how do these strands of knowledge engage with the question of how the flying body affects the mind and vice versa?