Motherless Creations: Fictions Of Artificial Life, 1650-1890

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Fictionality and Artificial Life
	Gender, Race, and Transhumanism
	Overview of Chapters
	Scope and Methodology
	Notes
Part 1: The Rationale for Creating Life without Mothers, 1650–1800
	Notes
	Chapter 1: Fables about the Birthing Body in the Long Eighteenth Century
		The Dangers of Maternal Imagination
		Beautiful Children in “Callipaedia”
			The Womb as a Tomb
		The Homunculus in Embryology and Alchemy
		Notes
	Chapter 2: Automaton: The Analogy of “Man a Machine” in Descartes and Obstetrics
		Descartes, Automata, and Imagination
			Man-Midwives and Forceps
		Smellie’s Birthing Machine
		Vaucanson’s Automata
		Notes
	Chapter 3: Pygmalion as Creator of Artificial Life
		Deslandes and Materialist Creation
			Imagination as the Spark of Life
		Rousseau and Self-Reflexive Creation
			Appendix: Chronological Bibliography of Pygmalion Texts, 1689-1890 46
		Notes
Part 2: Motherless Children in Literature of the Romantic Era, 1800–1832
	Notes
	Chapter 4: Homunculus and the Search for Immortality in Goethe’s Faust
		Artificial Lives and Deaths
		Homunculus’s Alchemical Creation
			Artificial Families
		Goethe’s Two-Sex Model of Creating Life
		Professors Making Students
		Notes
	Chapter 5: Olympia and the Romance Scam in Hoffmann’s The Sandman
		Nathanael’s Unreliable Narration
		The Uncanny
		The Chess Player, Poe, and Automata
		The Professor as Swindler
		Olympia and Klara as Musical Counterpoint
		Notes
	Chapter 6: The Creature, His Companion, and the Singularity in Shelley’s Frankenstein
		The Effect of Maternal Absence
		An Education in Solitary Creation
		Making a Monster
			The Creature’s Race
			Miscegenation and the Companion
		The Incestuous Brides of Frankenstein
		Notes
	Chapter 7: The Golem: A Reflection on the Purpose of Artificial Life
		The Golem in Jewish Tradition
		The Anonymous Creators of Golems in Grimm and Brentano
		Arnim’s Isabella of Egypt
			Golem Bella
		The Golem in Hoffmann and O’Brien
			The Golem and Frankenstein
		Notes
Part 3: Making Artificial Slaves in French and American Literature, 1850–1890
	Notes
	Chapter 8: The Sex Bot Hadaly in Villiers’s Tomorrow’s Eve
		Alicia Clary, Evelyn Habal, and Degeneration
			The Android Hadaly’s Ideal Corpse
		Hysteria and Sowana
			Inhuman Women
		Edison as Engineer of Humans
		Engineering French Families
		Notes
	Chapter 9: Constructing Identity through the “Iron Slave” in Melville’s The Bell-Tower
		Identifying the Iron Slave
		White Identity in Melville
		The Artist versus the Machine
		Gender
		Notes
	Chapter 10: White Supremacy in Ellis’s The Steam Man
		Prequel to the Edisonade
			The Steam Man as Postbellum Slave
		Gynecological Experiments
		The Steam Man as Mediator of Racial Hierarchies
			Black Performers as Machines
			Comparative Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 11: Conclusion
		The Narratological Function of Motherless Creations and Their Makers
		The Threat and Potential of Motherless Creations
		Missing Mothers
		Notes
Bibliography
Index