Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?

نویسنده

  • Kevin LaGrandeur
چکیده

In his article "Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?" Kevin LaGrandeur analyzes the relationships between literary images of artificial humans associated with medieval alchemists and alchemy, their modified reemergence in the Renaissance, and how such androids may forecast the idea of a posthuman subjectivity that is connected with their present-day descendents. For example, the talking brass heads in Robert Greene's two Renaissance plays, The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Alphonsus, Prince of Aragon have their roots in Arabic sources, and the former derives specifically from legends concerning the thirteenth-century alchemist and philosopher Roger Bacon. These early instances of the artificial anthropoid also anticipate, in a broad sense, the kinds of philosophical issues regarding subjectivity that cyborgs bring up for our "posthuman" society. The literature of the earlier era also represents a fear that humans will be diminished-all of the creators in the fictional literature examined are in danger of losing control of their creations, and thus of having their agency called into dispute. Kevin LaGrandeur, "Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman?" page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 12.3 (2010):

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Ancient Definitions of Personhood and Difficult Social Precedents: The Homunculus, the Golem, and Aristotle

This article discusses the basic philosophical and legal standards applied to defining the existential status of two artificial androids, the golem and the homunculus, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when their creation was actually considered possible and often believed to be an accomplished fact. It will also show how the historical definition of personhood has generally coincided wit...

متن کامل

Virtue in Machiavelli’s Political Thought

The interpretability of Machiavelli’s political thought relates, in the most part, to the concept of virtue and its dimensions. In Western thought, this concept has had continuity and has reached the Renaissance and Machiavelli’s times. In the Roman and Medieval tradition, philosophical, verbal, religious and even literary and historical approaches were dominant in the clarification and explana...

متن کامل

Christianity: A Cause of Modern Science?

When we think of Christianity's role in the rise of science, what do we think of? How it hindered it, such as the conflict between Galileo (1564-1642) and the Inquisition in the seventeenth century? Or, perhaps, do we think of Thomas Huxley debating evolution with Bishop Wilberforce in the nineteenth century? What we need to do now is take a deep breath, and take a step out of today's overwhelm...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2017