[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-40426-en":3,"doc-seo-40426-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},40426,8796095461610,"Oliver","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c",2,"Literature","Engines of the Imagination Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine","Engines of the Imagination examines how Renaissance Europeans responded to machines and mechanisms through poetry, philosophy, art, and engineering. Jonathan Sawday traces how engagement with devices shaped new attitudes toward gender, work, and labour, and helped seed early ideas about artificial life and reason pursued by later seventeenth-century thinkers. The book also highlights conflicting reactions to technology, framing the machine-driven world through stories of loss, catastrophe, and debates on progress versus humanity’s fall.","ENGINES OF THE IMAGINATION  \nHow did men and women in earlier ages respond to their technologies? In his characteristically lucid and captivating style, Jonathan Sawday explores poetry, philosophy, art, and engineering to reveal the lost world of the machine in the pre-industrial culture of the European Renaissance.  \nIn the Renaissance, machines and mechanisms appealed to familiar figures such as Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, and Leonardo da Vinci, as well as to a host of lesser-known writers and artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This intellectual and aesthetic engagement with devices of all kinds would give rise to new attitudes towards gender as well as towards work and labour, and even fostered the beginnings of the new sciences of artificial life and reason which would be pursued by Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz in the later seventeenth century.  \nBut writers, philosophers, and artists often had conflicting reactions to the technology that was beginning to surround them. For at the heart of the creation of a machine-driven world were stories of loss and catastrophe. Was technology a token of human progress or was it, rather, a sign of the fall of humanity from its original state of innocence? These contradictory attitudes are part of the legacy of the European Renaissance, and this historical legacy helps to explain many of our own attitudes towards the technology that surrounds us, sustains us, and sometimes troubles us today.  \nJonathan Sawday is Professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He has taught at universities in Britain, Ireland, and the United States. As well as writing many articles and essays on Renaissance literature and culture, he is the author of The Body Emblazoned (Routledge, 1995) and co-editor (with Tom Healy) of Literature and the English CivilWar (1990) and (with Neil Rhodes) The Renaissance Computer (Routledge, 2000) .  \nPraise for Engines of the Imagination:  \n‘This is a magisterial work of myth-busting, and a marvellous demonstration of how art and literature may be used to reanimate the material imagination of an historical period.The old idea of the Renaissance as a pre-technological pause, or paradise, is gone for good.’  \nSteven Connor, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK  \n‘Jonathan Sawday has written another big, beautiful, brilliant book that will change the way we all see (and hear) the Renaissance.’  \nGary Taylor, Florida State University, USA  \n‘This is a brilliant achievement . . . It has huge intellectual and imaginative range and is written with great vitality . . . This could be the book of the decade in Renaissance Studies.’  \nNeil Rhodes, University of St Andrews, UK  \n‘Jonathan Sawday’s pioneering and thoughtful work can change the course of the study of the Early Modern period . . . This illuminating book enlargesour sense of the Renaissance, redirects our focus, and shows us a world elsewhere we have not seen before.’  \nArthur Kinney, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA  \n‘Engines of the Imagination offers a fascinating picture of Renaissance encounters with technology. Engaging and entertaining, Sawday’s book will become required reading for all students of the period.’  \nMary Poovey, NewYork University, USA  \nENGINES OF THE IMAGINATION  \nRenaissance culture and the rise of the machine  \nJonathan Sawday  \nFirst published 2007 by Routledge  \n2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN  \nSimultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge  \n270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016  \nRoutledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  \nThis edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007 .  \n“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s  \ncollection of thousands of [eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk](eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk).”© 2007 Jonathan Sawday  \nTypeset in Joanna and Scala Sans by The Running Head ","cbCaiv32aYwd0RFK","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiv32aYwd0RFK","pdf",5113144,3,1,425,"English","en",105,"# Renaissance culture and the rise of the machine\n## The Renaissance machine and its discontents\n## Philosophy, power, and politics in Renaissance technology","[{\"question\":\"How does the book connect Renaissance culture to technology?\",\"answer\":\"It explores how machines and mechanisms were taken up in poetry, philosophy, and art, showing cultural engagement with engineering as part of Renaissance intellectual and aesthetic life.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of impacts does the book attribute to the Renaissance encounter with machines?\",\"answer\":\"It links these encounters to shifting attitudes toward gender and toward work and labour, and it describes how they contributed to early notions related to artificial life and reason.\"},{\"question\":\"Does the book treat technology as unambiguously beneficial?\",\"answer\":\"No. It emphasizes contradictory responses, including narratives of loss and catastrophe, and asks whether technology signaled human progress or the fall from an original state of innocence.\"}]",1783311355,655,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":85,"head_meta":87,"extra_data":89,"updated_unix":28},"engines-of-the-imagination-renaissance-culture-and-the-rise-of-the-machine","",{"@graph":36,"@context":84},[37,52,67],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,49],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",{"item":50,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":51},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/engines-of-the-imagination-renaissance-culture-and-the-rise-of-the-machine/40426/",4,{"url":50,"name":13,"@type":53,"author":54,"headline":13,"publisher":56,"fileFormat":59,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":60,"datePublished":61,"encodingFormat":59,"isAccessibleForFree":62,"interactionStatistic":63},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":55},"Person",{"url":41,"name":57,"@type":58},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-07-12","2026-07-06",true,{"@type":64,"interactionType":65,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":66},"ViewAction",{"@type":68,"mainEntity":69},"FAQPage",[70,76,80],{"name":71,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":73},"How does the book connect Renaissance culture to technology?","Question",{"text":74,"@type":75},"It explores how machines and mechanisms were taken up in poetry, philosophy, and art, showing cultural engagement with engineering as part of Renaissance intellectual and aesthetic life.","Answer",{"name":77,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":78},"What kinds of impacts does the book attribute to the Renaissance encounter with machines?",{"text":79,"@type":75},"It links these encounters to shifting attitudes toward gender and toward work and labour, and it describes how they contributed to early notions related to artificial life and reason.",{"name":81,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":82},"Does the book treat technology as unambiguously beneficial?",{"text":83,"@type":75},"No. It emphasizes contradictory responses, including narratives of loss and catastrophe, and asks whether technology signaled human progress or the fall from an original state of 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