Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History

The automaton, known today as the robot, can be seen as a metaphor for the historical period in which it is explored. Chapters include examinations of Iconoclasm's fear that art might surpass nature, the Cartesian mind/body divide, automata as objects of courtly desire, the uncanny Olympia, and the revolutionary Robots in post-WWI drama. 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. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-15 Iconoclasm and Automata....Pages 16-47 Descartes’s Mimetic Faculty....Pages 48-72 From Aristocrats to Autocrats: The Elite as Automata....Pages 73-110 Olympia’s Legacy....Pages 111-147 From Automata to Automation: The Birth of the Robot in R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)....Pages 148-176 Epilogue....Pages 177-181 Back Matter....Pages 182-220 The automaton, known today as the robot, can be seen as a metaphor for the historical period in which it is explored. Chapters include examinations of Iconoclasm's fear that art might surpass nature, the Cartesian mind/body divide, automata as objects of courtly desire, and the uncanny Olympia Introduction Iconoclasm and automata Descartes' mimetic faculty From artistocrats to autocrats: the elite as automata Olympia's Legacy From automata to automation: the birth of the robot in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Epilogue.