ABSTRACT
This chapter compares two adaptations of Pygmalion: a French tale, Pygmalion, or the Animated Statue (Pigmalion, ou la statue animée) by André-François Boureau-Deslandes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s lyrical scene, Pygmalion. Versions of Ovid’s story of Pygmalion and the statue from Metamorphoses became the dominant narrative of creation in the long eighteenth century. Pygmalion resembles other creators with the power to animate new life: scientists, physicians, and automaton manufacturers. Pygmalion’s statue represents an idealized act of creation, for the sculptor sublimates his artistic vision and imagination to create life. In this way and others, Pygmalion manufactures what we now call artificial life (ALife). At stake is identifying the protagonist responsible for creation: the mother, father, artist, or God. Eighteenth-century adaptations of the story of Pygmalion and his statue establish the motherless creation’s infertility, disposability, and two-dimensionality. The chapter concludes with an appendix of British and European adaptations: “Chronological Bibliography of Pygmalion Texts, 1689–1890.”
