Engineering the Environment and Imagining Nature in the Early Modern World
Engineering the Environment and Imagining Nature in the Early Modern World
Dr Thomas Murphy (New College) & Dr Elly Dezateux (Christ Church)
Comment from DPhil candidate Utsa Bose (History)
Dr Elly Dezateux (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Legacies of Colonialism, Christ Church)
Ruptures and attrition: the politics of environmental engineering in early modern England
Recent scholarship has emphasised that sovereignty and central authority were expressed and fuelled by an expansion of environmental governance across early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. By examining the contested and precarious nature of state action to ‘improve’ English wetlands in this period, this paper identifies a more expansive environmental politics that challenged institutional parameters and agendas.
Dr Thomas Murphy (Career Development Fellow in French, New College)
The Problem of (Early Modern) "Nature"
Understood as a turning point in the history of science, the emergence of an objectified, conquerable 'nature' in the 17th century poses an equally significant philological dilemma. Through case studies of translations of Vergil by Dryden and Du Bellay, this talk shows how a new meaning of 'nature' arises in translation, even where 'natura' is absent in the source, demonstrating the importance of humanistic reading practices in the development of modern scientific thought.
