The article is a study of the views of John Soane, one of the key figures in the English architec... more The article is a study of the views of John Soane, one of the key figures in the English architectural tradition, the last Neo-Classical architect and keeper of classicist architectural artefacts. Being at the crossroads of the topical trends of European architecture, his works were in the focus of numerous diverse architectural battles of the 18th century, including the conflict between the classical ideal and the birth of Gothic Revival as the national, state style.
The article considers a broad range of eighteenth-century art and culture phenomena that were res... more The article considers a broad range of eighteenth-century art and culture phenomena that were responsible for the birth of Frankenstein, the great romantic monster. These include popular optical effects, such as the “magic lantern” and phantasmagoria, that filled the enlightened public with awe by the visual demonstration of spirits and the “resurrection of the dead”; galvanism and anatomical experiments in bringing the dead back to life with the help of electricity; enthusiastic invention of moving automatons that imitated the behavior and skills of living creatures and, last but not least, androids as the direct prototypes of the future monster. Shifting gradually from the outposts of scientific experiment to the sphere of entertainment culture, all these phenomena happened to be immediately related to the mythology of creating the ideal human being that, at the will of its creator – the scholarly magus – turned out to be the first monster in culture history. Keywords—automata; Fr...
The article is a study of the views of John Soane, one of the key figures in the English architec... more The article is a study of the views of John Soane, one of the key figures in the English architectural tradition, the last Neo-Classical architect and keeper of classicist architectural artefacts. Being at the crossroads of the topical trends of European architecture, his works were in the focus of numerous diverse architectural battles of the 18th century, including the conflict between the classical ideal and the birth of Gothic Revival as the national, state style.
The article considers a broad range of eighteenth-century art and culture phenomena that were res... more The article considers a broad range of eighteenth-century art and culture phenomena that were responsible for the birth of Frankenstein, the great romantic monster. These include popular optical effects, such as the “magic lantern” and phantasmagoria, that filled the enlightened public with awe by the visual demonstration of spirits and the “resurrection of the dead”; galvanism and anatomical experiments in bringing the dead back to life with the help of electricity; enthusiastic invention of moving automatons that imitated the behavior and skills of living creatures and, last but not least, androids as the direct prototypes of the future monster. Shifting gradually from the outposts of scientific experiment to the sphere of entertainment culture, all these phenomena happened to be immediately related to the mythology of creating the ideal human being that, at the will of its creator – the scholarly magus – turned out to be the first monster in culture history. Keywords—automata; Fr...
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