Articles liés à The Automaton

The Automaton - Couverture souple

Hoffmann, E. T. A.

 
9781447465645: The Automaton

Synopsis

A fairground Turk that answers unaskable questions, a hidden mind behind the machine, and a secret that unnerves all who hear it drive this ingenious tale of the marvellous.

First published in 1814 and later gathered into The Serapion Brethren, The Automaton (Die Automate) sets two friends on the trail of a prophetic mechanical oracle, in a story often hailed as an ancestor of science fiction. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), the German Romantic jurist, composer, and critic, was fascinated by the uncanny frontier where music, machinery, and the soul meet.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

This early work by E. T. A. Hoffmann was originally published in 1814. Born in Königsberg, East Prussia in 1776, Hoffmann's family were all jurists, and during his youth he was initially encouraged to pursue a career in law. However, in his late teens Hoffman became increasingly interested in literature and philosophy, and spent much of his time reading German classicists and attending lectures by, amongst others, Immanuel Kant. Hoffman went on to produce a great range of both literary and musical works. Probably Hoffman's most wellknown story, produced in 1816, is 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King', due to the fact that – some seventysix years later it inspired Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. In the same vein, his story 'The Sandman' provided both the inspiration for Léo Delibes's ballet Coppélia, and the basis for a highly influential essay by Sigmund Freud, called 'The Uncanny'. (Indeed, Freud referred to Hoffman as the "unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature.") Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.

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