Mill of this world : studies in the ecology of circular motion in the age of Cervantes
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Miguel de Cervantes famously wrote the scene in which Don Quixote charges against windmills as though they were giants, while Sancho Panza sees them plainly as windmills. On the one hand, the object is understood as something else; on the other, it is a simple identity that hides any further understanding of the object. My dissertation takes this scene as a point of departure to inquire how language in the time of Cervantes captured understandings of technology, addressing the polysemy of circular motion embodied in and performed by machines such as mills, cranes and wheels. The results suggest that tensions between identity and difference like that in Don Quixote existed across literary genres and were part of the material and symbolic environment in which machines existed. This theme is approached variously. In Chapter 1, Juan de Herrera's manuscript on the principle of the crane used at El Escorial suggests mental automation of a geometrical idealism even in the empirical context of machine-building. Chapter 2 considers machine-building in the relatively new context of patent-granting, juxtaposing understudied descriptions of mills by inventors Ayanz, Garay and Lobato del Canto and those of nontechnical writers such as Polidoro and Pineda. I argue that these inventors approach machines from the point of view of how motions relate to output; linguistically, a mill is more than simply a mill, it is that entire relation. In contrast, mythographic and encyclopedic historiography consider machines primarily in terms of their functions, indexing them to various extrinsic elements. Finally, the materials assembled in Chapter 3 constitute a first survey of how, in Spanish (and some Italian) emblem books, machines with rotary elements, mills among them, are charged with moral elements and are made to stand for unresolvable aspects of existence itself.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2024; ©2024 |
| Publication date | 2024; 2024 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Endebo, Nelson |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Huber, Marie, 1976- |
| Degree committee member | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Degree committee member | Huber, Marie, 1976- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Comparative Literature |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nelson Endebo. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2024. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/yw862cy9342 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2024 by Nelson Endebo
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