Conference Presentations by Nina Beguš
The article addresses the universality of the Pygmalion myth by comparing two widely known Wester... more The article addresses the universality of the Pygmalion myth by comparing two widely known Western texts from the heart of the Pygmalion paradigm -Ovid's poem on Pygmalion from book 10 of the Metamorphoses and Hoffmann's short story The Sandman -with an early medieval Silk Road tale, The Painter and the Mechanical Maiden. On the basis of this comparison, the article shifts discussion of the Pygmalion paradigm from the diachronic to the typological, setting aside the spatial and chronological origins of the text to focus on how the main motifs play out in the text itself. The new typology of the Pygmalion paradigm I develop offers a framework for understanding how texts from this paradigm have universally evolved their primary motifs from the desire to create and obsess over humanlike creatures. The Pygmalionesque type presents a creator/lover of the inanimate woman in a single character who is aware of the artificial woman's nonhuman status; her eventual metamorphosis; and an overall successful humannonhuman relationship. The agalmatophiliac type presents a triangular scheme of characters -a creator, a lover, and an inanimate woman -in which the lover is deeply deluded and irrational, the humanlike creation lacks transformation, and the story concludes tragically.
Conference Reports by Nina Beguš
Primerjalna književnost, Jan 2014
Med 31. oktobrom in 3. novembrom 2013 se je na dunajski univerzi v organizaciji Inštituta Ludwiga... more Med 31. oktobrom in 3. novembrom 2013 se je na dunajski univerzi v organizaciji Inštituta Ludwiga Boltzmanna za zgodovino in teorijo biografije odvijala 3. bienalna konferenca Evropske mednarodne zveze za (avto)biografijo z naslovom Onkraj subjekta: novi premiki v pisanju o življenju (Beyond the Subject: New Developments in Life Writing). V štirih dneh se je zvrstilo sto referatov s temo biografske in avtobiografske reprezentacije v teoriji in praksi, zlasti v povezavi s sodobnimi mediji, ki spreminjajo tradicionalna pojmovanja subjekta in sebstva.
Primerjalna književnost, Jun 2013
Letošnje srečanje Modern Language Association je potekalo med 3. in 6. januarjem 2013 v Bostonu p... more Letošnje srečanje Modern Language Association je potekalo med 3. in 6. januarjem 2013 v Bostonu pod naslovom Avenues of Access. Naslovna tema je odpirala štiri problematike ameriškega visokega šolstva, in sicer dostop do visoke izobrazbe in kasneje do rednih profesur, vključitev spe cialne in rehabilitacijske pedagogike v humanistiko ter odprt dostop do učne komunikacije. Na krovno temo in na ostale bolj ali manj strogo lite rarne teme se je zvrstilo skoraj osemsto diskusij, delavnic in forumov. Štiri zasedanja, ki bodo predstavljena v tem poročilu, so bila v celoti namenjena aktualnim temam s področja svetovne književnosti.
Papers by Nina Beguš
arXiv (Cornell University), Oct 18, 2023
The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing f... more The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing fictional prompts as a novel tool for investigating cultural artifacts and social biases in storytelling both by humans and generative AI. The study analyzes 250 stories authored by crowdworkers in June 2019 and 80 stories generated by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in March 2023 by merging methods from narratology and inferential statistics. Both crowdworkers and large language models responded to identical prompts about creating and falling in love with an artificial human. The proposed experimental paradigm allows a direct comparison between human and LLM-generated storytelling. Responses to the Pygmalionesque prompts confirm the pervasive presence of the Pygmalion myth in the collective imaginary of both humans and large language models. All solicited narratives present a scientific or technological pursuit. The analysis reveals that narratives from GPT-3.5 and particularly GPT-4 are more more progressive in terms of gender roles and sexuality than those written by humans. While AI narratives can occasionally provide innovative plot twists, they offer less imaginative scenarios and rhetoric than human-authored texts. The proposed framework argues that fiction can be used as a window into human and AI-based collective imaginary and social dimensions.
21st International Conference of Europeanists, Mar 14, 2014
arXiv, 2023
The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing f... more The paper proposes a framework that combines behavioral and computational experiments employing fictional prompts as a novel tool for investigating cultural artifacts and social biases in storytelling both by humans and generative AI. The study analyzes 250 stories authored by crowdworkers in June 2019 and 80 stories generated by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in March 2023 by merging methods from narratology and inferential statistics. Both crowdworkers and large language models responded to identical prompts about creating and falling in love with an artificial human. The proposed experimental paradigm allows a direct comparison between human and LLM-generated storytelling. Responses to the Pygmalionesque prompts confirm the pervasive presence of the Pygmalion myth in the collective imaginary of both humans and large language models. All solicited narratives present a scientific or technological pursuit. The analysis reveals that narratives from GPT-3.5 and particularly GPT-4 are more more progressive in terms of gender roles and sexuality than those written by humans. While AI narratives can occasionally provide innovative plot twists, they offer less imaginative scenarios and rhetoric than human-authored texts. The proposed framework argues that fiction can be used as a window into human and AI-based collective imaginary and social dimensions.
the characters are anecdotally plain, which would have facilitated their recasting as Buddha's di... more the characters are anecdotally plain, which would have facilitated their recasting as Buddha's disciples. Finally, in form and story, the tale is reminiscent of the jātaka tales; in fact, the Tocharian version of the tale is included in a collection of jātakas called the Puṇyavanta Jātaka. In addition to the specific arguments marshaled above, some general observations also point to the conclusion that this tale was originally folkloric and later sacralized. In his famous introduction to the Panchatantra collection, Theodor Benfey presented his theory on the Buddhist origin and literary transmission of tales. Although there were many objections to his ideas (for more, see Chavannes 1: xvii), it is a fact that "Buddhism conserved the most ancient written redactions of tales that are common heritage" of many different cultures (Chavannes 1: xvii). Subsequent studies of Buddhist folk tales, 2 inspired by Benfey, have confirmed that sacralization tends to be secondary to this kind of tale. It is probable that The Painter and the Mechanical Maiden is a part of this tradition. In any case, the specific arguments pertaining to this tale's form and content suggest that it can be read as a Buddhist as well as a folkloristic tale. The tale itself occurs in three different corpora of texts: (a) the original frame, found in the two Sanskrit corpora, as well as the Tibetan Kanjur and Chinese Taishō Tripiṭaka, (b) the frame where individual tales are isolated and decontextualized, as in the Chinese Tripiṭaka, and (c) the unique Tocharian frame in Puṇyavanta Jātaka (possibly related to the Chinese Tripiṭaka version). The Sanskrit sources are found in two collections, Vinaya of the Mulasarvāstivādin 3 and 2 The term labels a genre of folk tales, e.g., Yeshi Dorjee's The three boys and other Buddhist folk tales from Tibet, Piriya Krairoek's Buddhist folk tales depicted at Chula Pathon Cedi, and Pāli collection of Tripiṭaka tales Buddhist birth stories, or Jātaka tales. The oldest collection of folklore extant: being the Jātakatthavannanā. 3 The earliest and most voluminous, albeit incomplete, version of the Vinaya of Mulasarvastivadin is found in the Gilgit manuscripts (Dutt Gilgit 3: 19), one of the world's earliest collections of manuscripts, believed to have been written in the fifth and sixth centuries (with more texts added in later centuries) (Dutt Gilgit 1: 7). Mulasarvāstivāda was one of the earliest Buddhist schools in India, which is why we can assume that these tales were circulating for Kathināvadāna. 4 In both collections, the tale is included in the introductory chapter to the 'Bhaisajyavastu' or 'Treatise about remedies' section. The episode takes place at an assembly by the mystical lake Anavapta, where Buddha speaks about his two main disciples, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. Śāriputra is known for his virtues of wisdom and Maudgalyāyana is famous for his supernatural powers (Dutt Early 29). In Buddha's story, the two disciples, presented as artisans, test each other's abilities. The tale The Painter and the Mechanical Maiden constitutes the first example of the disciples' trial. In all of the exemplary tales, Śāriputra's wisdom overcomes Maudgalyāyana's magic, thus accentuating the important religious point that wisdom is superior to supernatural powers (Hofinger 16). With the spreading of the Buddhist religion, the Sanskrit version of The Painter and the Mechanical Maiden was further introduced to Tibetans, Chinese, and Tocharians. According to Tibetan historians, it began to be translated to Tibetan from the Indian sacred texts in the early seventh century upon the order of King Song-tsän Gampo [Songtsen Gampo] (Davids ix).
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020
This article analyses philological and literary aspects of a jātaka tale with a pygmalionesque mo... more This article analyses philological and literary aspects of a jātaka tale with a pygmalionesque motif involving a craftsman who falls in love with a non-human woman. This tale circulated along the Silk Road in at least six different versions: two original Sanskrit versions; one Tibetan translation from the Sanskrit source; one Tocharian adaptation; and two Chinese translations that also adapt the work to a smaller degree than the Tocharian version. By analysing the textual contexts and the content of the tale in all its alterations, this article shows that the two versions that differ most from the others, the Tocharian and the older Chinese version, are closely related to each other. Further analysis of the Tocharian version situates the tale among its literary kin. An analysis of the formulaic elements of the Tocharian tale indicates possible relations to Chinese chu-kung-tiao and pien-wen genres. The article also suggests the Tibetan lha mo as a link between Indian prosimetric cam...
The Rhetoric of Topics and Forms, 2021
Voices in Bioethics, 2020
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020
This article analyses philological and literary aspects of a jātaka tale with a pygmalionesque mo... more This article analyses philological and literary aspects of a jātaka tale with a pygmalionesque motif involving a craftsman who falls in love with a non-human woman. This tale circulated along the Silk Road in at least six different versions: two original Sanskrit versions; one Tibetan translation from the Sanskrit source; one Tocharian adaptation; and two Chinese translations that also adapt the work to a smaller degree than the Tocharian version. By analysing the textual contexts and the content of the tale in all its alterations, this article shows that the two versions that differ most from the others, the Tocharian and the older Chinese version, are closely related to each other. Further analysis of the Tocharian version situates the tale among its literary kin. An analysis of the formulaic elements of the Tocharian tale indicates possible relations to Chinese chu-kung-tiao and pien-wen genres. The article also suggests the Tibetan lha mo as a link between Indian prosimetric campū style and the two Chinese genres. Finally, the analysis of the cluster of motifs in the tale is paralleled with canonical Western texts by Ovid and E. T. A. Hoffmann, opening fruitful venues for literary scholarship regarding human-like objects.
The Rhetoric of Topics and Forms, 2021
The motif of a man falling in love with a non-human woman has a long presence in literature, visu... more The motif of a man falling in love with a non-human woman has a long presence in literature, visual arts, and film. Mario Materassi's and Michelle Bloom's findings on the " Pygmalion paradigm " — a paradigm of texts with a Pygmalion-like main motif — reveal that the paradigm has changed significantly through time, most notably undergoing a " dissolution " in the nineteenth century (Bloom 291). My research shifts the discussion of the Pygmalion paradigm from the diachronic to the typological, setting aside the spatial and chronological origins of the text to focus on how the main motifs play out in the text itself. The new typology of the Pygmalion paradigm I develop — a simple typology of two types of texts — does not contradict Materassi's and Bloom's findings on the shift within the Pygmalion paradigm, but offers a framework for understanding how texts from this paradigm, in all their many contexts, have universally evolved their primary motifs from the single, common conceit of human desire for the non-human. From the nineteenth century onwards, texts conforming to the Pygmalion paradigm are plentiful within the Western tradition; conversely, relatively few textual examples of the motif persist from ancient or medieval times. I address the universality of the motif by comparing two widely known Western texts from the heart of the Pygmalion paradigm — Ovid's Pygmalion and E. T. A. Hoffmann's Sandman — to an early medieval tale The Painter and the Mechanical Maiden, which circulated on the Silk Road in the Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Tocharian languages and is, to my knowledge, as yet unknown to literary scholarship. On the basis of this comparison and through detailed analysis of the paradigm's main motifs, I describe the two proposed typological types. My analysis also serves to substantiate the universality of the Pygmalion motif in Eurasian literatures. I first outline the scope of the Pygmalion paradigm by juxtaposing my understanding of the paradigm's thematic material with descriptions of its elements by three scholars, Mario Materassi, Michelle Bloom, and Florence Gacoin-Marks, whose unrelated studies on aspects of the Pygmalion myth texts still show some common findings. Then, in the main part of the discussion, I analyze the three exemplary texts cited above and present my binary typology. Finally, I discuss the implications of the typology and its potential use in further research on the Pygmalion paradigm and related topics.
Uploads
Conference Presentations by Nina Beguš
Conference Reports by Nina Beguš
Papers by Nina Beguš