Romantic automata : exhibitions, figures, organisms / edited by Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Demson, Michael, editor.

Clason, Christopher R., editor.

Series:

Transits (Bucknell University)

Transits: literature, thought & culture, 1650-1850

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Robots in literature.

Literature and technology--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and technology.

Literature and technology--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

History.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 253 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"A deep dread of puppets and the machinery that propels them surfaced in Romantic literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century; Romantic Automata is a collection of essays examining the rise of cultural suspicion of all imitations of homo sapiens and similar machinery, as witnessed in the literature and arts of the time. For most of the eighteenth century, automata were deemed a celebration of human ingenuity, feats of science and reason. Among the Romantics, however, they prompted a contradictory apprehension about mechanization and contrivance: such science and engineering threatened the spiritual nature of life, the source of compassion in human society. Recent scholarship in post-humanism, post-colonialism, disability studies, post-modern feminism, eco-criticism, and radical Orientalism has significantly affected the critical discourse on this topic. The essays in this collection open new methodological approaches to understanding human interaction with technology that strives to simulate or to supplement organic life"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 The Uncanny Valley: E.T.A. Hoffmann, Sigmund Freud, Masahiro Mori p. 19 / Frederick Burwick

2 The (Re-)Winding of Hoffmann's Automata: From Offenbach's 1881 Opera to Powell and Pressburger's 1951 Film p. 35 / Ashley Shams

3 Uncanny Prosthetics: Wounded Bodies in the Lithographs of Théodore Géricault, 1818-1820 p. 51 / Peter Erickson

4 Romantic Tales of Pseudo-Automata: Jacques de Vaucanson and the Chess-Playing Turk in Literature and Culture p. 87 / Wendy C. Nielsen

5 Rattled Women, Shaken Toys: Wollstonecraft, Baudelaire, and the Musical Lady p. 106 / Erin M. Goss

6 Automatic for All: Mary Shelley's Posthuman Passion p. 128 / Kate Singer

7 "A little earthly idol to contract your ideas": Global Hermeneutics in Phebe Gibbes's Zoriada, or, Village Annals (1786) p. 146 / Kathryn Freeman

Part 3 Organisms

8 Schilling's Uncanny Organism p. 167 / Stefani Engelstein

9 "It ... lives by dying": S. T. Coleridge's Non-Vital Life and Colonial "Necoral-Politics" p. 186 / Lenora Hanson

10 The Metaphysical Machinery of Mining in Novalis's Works p. 204 / Christina M. Weiler.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-241) and index.

ISBN:

9781684481767

1684481767

9781684481774

1684481775

OCLC:

1112902094