Contribution to Book
“Romantic Tales of Pseudo-Automata: Jacques de Vaucanson and the Chess-Playing Turk in Literature and Culture.”
Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms
(2020)
Abstract
RomanticTales of Pseudo Automata: The Chess-Playing Turk in Hoffmann, Poe, and Benjamin investigates literary depictions of automata and professions in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain and Europe. I argue that tales about pseudo automata and androids function as meta-narratives about the potential for technology to change global economies in Romantic-era Britain and Europe.
The story about Descartes ostensibly creating an android in the image of his deceased daughter is one example of a tale about a pseudo automaton. Other actual automata, such as Vaucanson’s duck, mixed anatomical authenticity with carefully crafted illusion in order to give the impression of technological marvel. The Chess-Playing Turk is probably the most well-known narrative about a pseudo automaton. Wolfgang von Kempelen, a Hungarian counselor and entrepreneur at the court of Maria Theresa in Vienna created this supposed android. The Chess Player, adorned in Turkish attire, sat behind a chessboard set on top of a large chest that appeared to house clockwork. Kempelen constructed the box to be opened to show that no one was inside, and wound a casket every few moves in a way that suggested that he was operating a machine. The fact that the Chess Player lost so often led to suspicion; in 1784, a French author suggested that a dwarf was hidden inside, and this idea became a recurring hypothesis in many analyses of the Chess Player in English, French, and German. In fact, a full-grown operator sat behind a second panel. After Kempelen’s death, Napoleon’s stepson, Eugène Beauharnais, bought the Chess Player, and then sold it to Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who toured the Chess Player in America along with other genuine automata and entertainments.
This essay brings together key sources about the Chess Player: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story, The Automata (Die Automate, 1814); Edgar Alan Poe’s piece originally composed for the Southern Literary Messenger, Maelzel’s Chess Player (1836); and Walter Benjamin’s On the Concept of History (Über den Begriff der Geschichte, 1940) and essay on Hoffmann (1930). These authors and texts promote skepticism about the purposive character of transcendental natural philosophy, on the one hand, and global capitalism, on the other. Hoffmann’s famous novella, The Sandman (1815/1816), offers further evidence for these claims; alongside The Automata, The Sandman reflects the changing economic, social status of the professoriate and the increasing importance of the university in German-speaking communities.
The conclusion reflects on the legacy of the Chess-Playing Turk. The Chess Player’s deception—the man hidden in the machine—has come to represent the conditions of modern labor in general. Social scientists now rely on Amazon’s marketplace for Human Intelligence Tasks, called the Mechanical Turk after the Chess-Playing Turk. In this way, this chapter contributes to scholarly understanding of the way that literature allows readers to understand exchanges in the global marketplace, from the eighteenth century to the present.
Keywords
- robots,
- romanticism,
- chess player,
- mechanical turk,
- e. t. a. hoffmann,
- edgar alan poe,
- walter benjamin,
- History: Science and Technology,
- Cultural Studies,
- Literary Studies,
- 18th Century Studies
Disciplines
- Arts and Humanities,
- American Studies,
- Comparative Literature,
- Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America,
- Literature in English, North America,
- Other English Language and Literature,
- European Languages and Societies,
- French and Francophone Language and Literature,
- French and Francophone Literature,
- German Language and Literature and
- German Literature
Publication Date
2020
Editor
Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason
Publisher
Bucknell University Press
ISBN
9781684481774
Citation Information
Nielsen, Wendy C. “Romantic Tales of Pseudo-Automata: Jacques de Vaucanson and the Chess-Playing Turk in Literature and Culture.” Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms. Edited by Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2020, pp. 87-105.