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2 results

  • Chapter 12 - Sublime Puppets versus Uncanny Automata

  • from Part IV - Interactions
  • Edited by Suzy Anger, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Thomas Vranken, University of the South Pacific
  • Book:
    Victorian Automata
    Published online:
    15 March 2024
    Print publication:
    28 March 2024, pp 255-271

  • Summary

    In recent works on the symbolic significance of artificial beings in literature, the descriptions of humans as puppets or automata have been analyzed in singular terms, signifying people who lack autonomy in action or thought. This chapter demonstrates that in European literature of the early nineteenth century, the puppet and the automaton are used in disparate ways, the former in positive terms as a representation of a being that is in tune with natural forces and the latter in negative terms as a dead being that mindlessly follows the dictates of its programming. Through the examination of both objects in the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jean Paul, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, George Sand, and Carlo Collodi, the symbolic difference is explained through its connection to the Romantic worldview of the period, which valorized the surrender to higher forces while decrying the mechanization of humanity.

Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia
  • Miniaturization and Cultural Hybridity
  • Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
  • Published online:
    19 December 2019
    Print publication:
    12 March 2020
  • In this volume, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper investigates the impact of Greek art on the miniature figure sculptures produced in Babylonia after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia were used as agents of social change, by visually expressing and negotiating cultural differences. The scaled-down quality of figurines encouraged both visual and tactile engagement, enabling them to effectively work as non-threatening instruments of cultural blending. Reconstructing the embodied experience of miniaturization in detailed case studies, Langin-Hooper illuminates the dynamic process of combining Greek and Babylonian sculpture forms, social customs, and viewing habits into new, hybrid works of art. Her innovative focus on figurines as instruments of both personal encounter and global cultural shifts has important implications for the study of tiny objects in art history, anthropology, classics, and other disciplines.