Automata and mimesis on the stage of theatre history
By: Kara Reilly
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9780230232020
Subjects: Drama; Theater; Motion in literature; Mimesis in literature; History and criticism; Robots in literature; History
Description: This book explores automata or early robots as performers on the stage of theatre history. Automata are precursors to our digital culture, demonstrating that our spectacular culture of machine-based entertainments has numerous historical precedents. Automata are surprisingly saturated with intellectual and cultural history. Chapters examine topics like English Reformation Iconoclasm's fear that art might surpass God's nature in Elizabethan moving statues; the influence that hydraulic garden automata had on Descartes' mechanical philosophy; automata as ideal objects of the aristocracy in eighteenth-century Europe; theatrical productions focussed on that alluring automaton Olympia; and a case study of R.U.R., the drama that coined the word Robot. At its heart, this study examines automata as both performative objects of mimesis and metaphors for the period in which they are explored.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Iconoclasm and automata; title: Descartes' mimetic faculty; title: From artistocrats to autocrats: the elite as automata; title: Olympia's Legacy; title: From automata to automation: the birth of the robot in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots); title: Epilogue.