Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity

List of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Natural Automation
2. Dramatic Automation
3. Mechanical Automation

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Maria Gerolemou is Leventis Research Associate in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK.

Summary

Technical automation – the ability of man-made (or god-made) objects to move and act autonomously – is not just the province of engineering or science fiction. In this book, Maria Gerolemou, by taking as her starting point the close semantic and linguistic relevance of technical automation to natural automatism, demonstrates how ancient literature, performance and engineering were often concerned with the way nature and artifice interacted. Moving across epic, didactic, tragedy, comedy, philosophy and ancient science, this is a brilliant assembly of evidence for the power of ‘automatic theatre’ in ancient literature.

Gerolemou starts with the earliest Greek literature of Homer and Hesiod, where Hephaestus’ self-moving artefacts in the Iliad reflect natural forces of motion and the manufactured Pandora becomes an autonomous woman. Her second chapter looks at Greek drama, where technical automation is used to augment and undermine nature not only through staging and costume but also in plot devices where statues come to life and humans behave as automatic devices. In the third chapter, Gerolemou considers how the philosophers of the 4th century BCE and the engineers of the Hellenistic period with their mechanical devices contributed to a growing dialogue around technical automation and how it could help its audience glance and marvel at the hidden mechanisms of self-motion. Finally, the book explores the ways technical automation is employed as an ekphrastic technique in late antiquity and early Byzantium.

Foreword

An examination of the interrelation and co-dependency of mechanisation in ancient Greek theatre with human agency

Product details

• Authors: Dr Maria (adjunct lecturer Gerolemou, Maria Gerolemou, GEROLEMOU MARIA
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2022
• EAN: 9781350077591
• ISBN: 978-1-350-07759-1
• No. of pages: 200
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Ancient Greece, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, DRAMA / Ancient & Classical, HISTORY / Ancient / Greece, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Classical history / classical civilisation, Theatre: technical & background skills, c 500 BCE to c 1500 CE (Italian ancient and medieval period), Theatre: technical and background skills, Ancient, classical and medieval texts, Literary studies: plays and playwrights