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.” (Werke I, p. 404; my translation.) While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) does not address the AI takeover as we understand it today, it does explore the idea of a human-created entity rebelling against its creator. In this case, the entity is not a machine but the Creature, an assemblage of body parts brought to life through unspecified scientific means. Shelley’s novel can be read as a reinterpretation of Milton’s Satan or the golem myth, but it also refers to the myth of Prometheus, popular in German Romanticism. Both Goethe and Friedrich Schlegel refer to Promethean efforts to manufacture a race of artificial humans who despise God. What historical process led to Roy the replicant (mis)quoting William Blake’s America a Prophecy (1793) in Blade Runner (1982)? Blake’s character Orc is the embodiment of rebellion against Urizen, but Ridley Scott’s film is about the rebellion of machines against humanity.

Asko Nivala: “The Gears of Discontent: Mechanical Automata and Societal Upheaval in the Romantic Era.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) conference 2024. Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA, 15 – 18 August 2024.