Eros, Thanatos, Technè

Abstract

This paper aims to point out the ambivalence of machine in Jarry’s fictional novel. Machines are both exploited as instruments of human desire’s satisfaction and considered as potentially destructive. This ambivalence provides the frame of the narrative, built around two imaginary mechanical devices which allow to experiment, on the literary level, some of the limits of human being.

Keywords

• machines
• desire
• human being
• limit
• philosophy
• literature