Balloon Flight and British Literature of the 18th and 19th Centuries

FAIN: FT-259686-18

Jason H. Pearl
Florida International University Board of Trustees (Miami, FL 33199-2516)

Research and writing for a book on the emerging technology of ballooning in 18^th-century England and its impact on literature and the techniques of omniscient narration.

This book project shows how the advent of flight enabled nothing less than new ways of seeing the world. The first hot air balloons, beginning in 1783, gave the bird’s-eye view to human eyes, and writers in various genres, factual and fictional, adopted the perspective of an observer in a balloon basket. These writers described natural and human-built environments from extraordinary angles and distances, portraying the geographies of Britain and beyond at unprecedented scales. They thus put into practice, more literally than ever before, scientific methods such as detached observation and far-reaching empirical induction, as well as the literary technique of omniscient narration.

Associated Products

“The View from Above: Satiric Distance and the Advent of Ballooning in Britain.” (Article)
Title: “The View from Above: Satiric Distance and the Advent of Ballooning in Britain.”
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Focusing on The Devil in an Air Balloon (1784) and Thomas Hood's "Ode to Mr. Graham" (1825), this essay argues that ballooning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was not just an object of satire but also a technique for it, a means to assess the world from a hitherto never-experienced perspective. The view from above could take a fuller measure of societal corruption and reframe it within a wider context. Ultimately, this paper corrects the assumption that the view from above was necessarily an epistemology of domination, revealing a broader variety of aesthetic and ideological purposes.
Year: 2018
Format: Journal
Publisher: Eighteenth-Century Studies

"Aerostatic Bodies and the View from Above" (Article)
Title: "Aerostatic Bodies and the View from Above"
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Forthcoming article about embodiment and the view from above.
Year: 2018
Publisher: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture

"Henry Mayhew's Aerial Ecology" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Henry Mayhew's Aerial Ecology"
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Paper about Henry Mayhew and descriptions of smog above nineteenth-century London.
Date: 10/14/2018

"Hot-Air Balloons are Useless" (Article)
Title: "Hot-Air Balloons are Useless"
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Popular-audience article about the history of ballooning.
Year: 2018
Format: Magazine
Publisher: The Atlantic

"Our Drones, Ourselves" (Article)
Title: "Our Drones, Ourselves"
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Review essay about recent work on drones.
Year: 2018
Format: Other
Publisher: Public Books

"Balloon Madness" (Article)
Title: "Balloon Madness"
Author: Pearl
Abstract: Review of recent book about ballooning.
Year: 2018
Format: Other
Publisher: London School of Economics Review of Books

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