My paper explores how the Romantic rebellion against the creator was transformed into the idea of a rebellion of machines. Samuel Butler’s “Darwin among the Machines” (1863) is considered the first text to introduce the idea of a machine race displacing humans. However, a similar fear was also expressed during the Romantic period. In Gräfin Dolores (1810) by Achim von Arnim, the Count Karl feels anxious after encountering automata of a mysterious doctor: “Still, he was tormented by the feeling of being completely alien and alone in the power of soulless machines, which, created by humans, could easily gain supremacy over him.

Friedrich Schlegel’s concept of irony emphasises self-awareness and self-reflexivity, allowing the work of art to create and question its own rules. Much like Kant’s transcendental knowledge, Schlegel’s formulation of art generates its own poetical rules from within, underscoring an autonomous quality. Asko Nivala: “Romantic Irony: Transcendental Reflection of Artistic Form”, an invited presentation at Romantic Irony symposium. The University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland, 12 December 2023.

Asko Nivala: “Romantic Database. The Zettelkasten and Commonplace Book as Literary Media”, conference paper at Romanticism and its Media. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Englische Romantik -conference. University of Leipzig, Germany, 5.–8. October 2023.

Harri Kiiskinen, Asko Nivala, Jasmine Westerlund & Juhana Saarelainen: “Extracting Geographical References from Finnish Literature. Fully Automated Processing of Plain-Text Corpora.” CCLS 2023 Würzburg – 2nd Annual Conference of Computational Literary Studies. Abstract In the Atlas of Finnish Literature 1870–1940 project, we extract geographical information from a Finnish-language corpus of literary texts published between 1870 and 1940. The texts are transformed from plain texts to TEI/XML, and further processed with named entity recognition and linking tools.

The Pleasures of Imagination – Art, Architecture and Aesthetics in 18th Century Europe The Finnish Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference Helsinki and on Zoom 21–22 October 2021. Aalto university, Runeberginkatu 14–16 entrance A, 3rd floor. My paper “Cityscapes and Landscapes in British and German Romanticism (1790–1840)” will be held on 22 October 2021 at 14.30. Caspar David Friedrich: Wiesen bei Greifswald (1821/1822). Wikimedia Commons.

Unknown Tongues is a symposium on Romanticism’s minor and marginal languages. On 24 September 2021, invited leading scholars will gather online to debate and discuss what a closer study of (trans)national Romanticisms through their languages can bring to Romantic and nineteenth-century studies, and what relevance a recovery of these traditions may have for our sense of the present. Organised by Brecht de Groote (Universiteit Gent ⬨ University of Ghent) and Rhys Kaminski-Jones (Prifysgol Cymru y Drindod Dewi Sant ⬨ University of Wales Trinity Saint David).