Moving Images and Talking Statues: Definitions of Medieval Automata

Time: 4:30 p.m.

Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University

Note: There is no pre-circulated paper for this colloquium

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Abstract. “Automata” is an early-modern word, initially used by Rabelais to refer to an object that moves by itself. The term was taken up by early modern natural philosophers in the seventeenth century—most notably Descartes—and has ramified in the twentieth century to encompass related terms, such as android, robot, and cyborg. Yet in medieval Europe, artificial objects that were or appeared to be self-moving appear in different media, different registers, and different settings, and they are referred to by a variety of terms that expose the diversity of the category that scholars often refer to as “medieval automata.” This paper will examine the semantic networks and intellectual valences of the terms that medieval writers used to describe these objects, from the copper knights and golden courtiers in medieval romances to the talking statues of historical legend to the mechanical statues that were part of courtly pageantry. The descriptions of these images reveal a great deal about how medieval writers thought these objects were constructed and how they worked, thereby allowing historians to determine coherences and discontinuities in a heterogeneous category of fantastical and material objects. Additionally, this paper will interrogate how modern and post-modern descriptions of pre-modern objects may obscure or energize their investigation.