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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Comparative Literature
Year Degree Awarded
2018
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Maria Tymoczko
Second Advisor
Luke Bouvier
Third Advisor
Karen Remmler
Fourth Advisor
Thomas Dumm and Jessica Barr
Subject Categories
Comparative Literature
Abstract
Though the present debate over artificial intelligence might seem an exclusively modern issue, the beginning of a widespread cultural debate actually dates from the end of the eighteenth century. Nineteenth-century authors quickly transformed the question of automata and artificial intelligence into something new, using popular fiction to adapt the automaton motif to political concerns and agendas. This dissertation is a cross-cultural investigation of these political dimensions of the automaton motif in nineteenth-century German, French, British, and American texts and cultural contexts. In it I employ systems theory and close readings to analyze the automaton motif as a cross-cultural system that reveals contemporary socio-political anxieties. The Introduction lays the groundwork for understanding the aims and methodology of the text. Chapter II rehearses and condenses nineteenth-century thinking about technology, with special attention given to the perception of human beings as mechanisms. It also presents a system of cross-cultural attitudes towards automata, along with relevant scientific and philosophical ideas. Chapter III focuses on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fictional rendering of the historical automaton called the Turk in the story “Die Automate” (1814); I argue that the Turk functions as an “influencing machine” and that this machine is, in its turn, a metaphorical representation of an authoritarian state. In Chapter IV I analyze Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s L’Eve future (1886) and show the automaton featured in the novel to be a response to contemporary constructions of womanhood. Chapter V investigates post-Civil War race relations and disability discourses as these are depicted in Edward Ellis’s dime novel The Steam Man of the Prairies (1886). Chapter VI shows that the flesh-and-blood bodies operating as mechanical humanoids in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) reveal anxieties over devolution. The concluding chapter deepens the readers’ appreciation of the political relevance of the automaton motif. I also show that this retrospective study of a past literary corpus that is relatively tractable provides a model of interpretation that can be profitably applied to modern literary depictions of artificial humans.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/11365255.0
Recommended Citation
Meirosu, Madalina, "THE ELOQUENCE OF AUTOMATA: SOCIO-POLITICAL COMMENTARY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE ON ARTIFICIAL HUMANOIDS" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1281.
https://doi.org/10.7275/11365255.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1281