Mind over matter: the thinking and speaking machine in fiction of the long nineteenth century

This doctoral thesis analyses the autonomous thinking and speaking body machine in fiction in the long nineteenth century in Europe and the USA. An autonomous body machine is, in my definition, a mechanical device which, either in form or function, either fully or in part, is self-governed and replicates a human being. My research is set out as a two-part question: firstly, how is the autonomous thinking and speaking machine represented in the fiction of this period, and, secondly, in its historical context, what does its autonomy signify? With the long nineteenth century I denote the period demarcated by the invention of Wolfgang von Kempelen’s (1734-1804) mechanical chess player in 1770 and George Bernard Shaw’s (1856-1950) 1912 play Pygmalion.
The desire to simulate thought and speech became the predominant driving force behind late eighteenth-century automaton building. Whereas the previous generation of automata had focused on external motion, these new automata differ in their focus on the replication of the internal faculties of thought and speech and, I argue, expanded the definition of life from mechanical motion to cognisance and the definition of prostheses from mechanical replacements to bodily enhancements.
I scrutinise the thinking and speaking body machine at the intersection of these changing definitions and demonstrate how in the discussed period these machines’ prosthetic/corrective potential was addressed metaphorically in fiction and employed to comment on contemporary cultural phenomena. I focus on the fiction of E.T.A Hoffmann (1776-1822), Edgar Allan Poe (1809- 1849), Samuel Butler (1835-1902) and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838-1889). A common factor in their fictions is the thinking and/or speaking machine embodying the far horizon of Enlightenment potential. In the discussed fictions, I argue, the new definition of life converged with that of the new definition of prostheses.