14th c. Robots

Steve Muhlberger has an interesting post on 14th c. robots, particularly a mechanical angel that greeted Richard II for his coronation in London in 1377. Much as I’d like to imagine the Tik-Tok Angel of London, clockwork seems unlikely in the context. The contrivance had to perform on cue and the moment of Richard’s arrival was unpredictable, so a puppet seems more likely than a clockwork automaton.

So I will try not to imagine Evangelion Genesis Ricardus, in which a team of moody dysfunctional anime adolescents, led by young Richard II, pilot giant clockwork automata in defense of the underground 14th c. complex of New Troy-3 from various alien menaces, periodically ducking behind gigantic mantlets to be rewound at the waterwheel-powered winding stations.

Instead I will cherish Froissart’s Horloge Amoureuse, in which a ticking clock becomes an extended metaphor for measured and enduring love. There’s something tremendously sweet about how Froissart handled this: first the wide-eyed curiosity at the wheels and foliot and whole complex mechanism, then the immediate impulse to turn it into a love-allegory.