Description
Book SynopsisMedieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, or silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed surveillance or discipline. Medieval Robots explores the forgotten history of real and imagined machines that captivated Europe from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries.
Trade Review"
Medieval Robots is not only a remarkably evocative book, but it also breaks new ground by virtue of being the first survey of its kind in the English-speaking academic world, relocating our discussion of the legacy of ancient automata to novel chronological coordinates. It is reasonable to hope that Truitt's book will lead to a reconsideration of 'Abbasid patronage of science, magical hermetism, and the nexus of technology and ethnography, among many other themes, not to mention to our understanding of the Middle Ages itself." *
Reviews in History *
"Engagingly written and thoughtfully researched,
Medieval Robots will be of value to specialists in the intellectual and literary history of the Middle Ages, as well as to more general readers. . . . Truitt's suggestive and nuanced account both firmly establishes the importance of medieval automata in the wider development of Western thought about the relationship of science, technology, and the imagination and opens the door to further research." *
American Historical Review *
"The first comprehensive work of scholarship on European automata of the Middle Ages,
Medieval Robots systematically and chronologically works through themes such as the transition from the magical to the mechanical and the liminal status of robots between art and nature, familiar and foreign. Well researched and well written, the book does an excellent job of showing the wider cultural significance of automata within medieval history and the history of science." * Pamela O. Long, author of
Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance *
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations
Introduction. The Persistence of Robots: An Archaeology of Automata
Chapter 1. Rare Devices: Geography and Technology
Chapter 2. Between Art and Nature: Natura artifex, Neoplatonism, and Literary Automata
Chapter 3. Talking Heads: Astral Science, Divination, and Legends of Medieval Philosophers
Chapter 4. The Quick and the Dead: Automata, Memorial Statues, and Corpses
Chapter 5. From Texts to Technology: Mechanical Marvels in Courtly and Public Pageantry
Chapter 6. The Clockwork Universe: Keeping Sacred and Secular Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
