The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature

This collection of ten essays, including an introduction by the editor, Hyman (English, Oberlin College), explores poetic representations of non-living objects in early modern English renaissance literature. These non-living objects are, especially when the creation of an artist or inventor, sites of a fraught optimism of the intellect and pessimism of the will. Divided into three parts, the first--creations, creatures and origins--considers literary automaton from the perspective of origins in Milton, Descartes, Shakespeare and Spenser. The second section is about motion and the expression of a will and agency in literary automata in Orphic poetry, devotional rhetoric and civic pageantry. The final section looks at automata as elaborate works of art with an element of intentional deception to them, with essays about Francis Bacon's clockwork nature, mechanical birds and magical machines in Herman Spenser's The Faerie Queen. The contributors are mostly professors of English from around the world and with a specific background in early modern English literature. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Wendy Beth Hyman is an assistant professor of English at Oberlin College, USA.