Frankenstein

1
Frankenstein

• Or, The Modern Prometheus

2
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Born August 30th, 1797
• Died February 1st, 1851
• 1818 Frankenstein
• 1823 Valperga or, The Life and Adventures of
  Castruccio, Prince of Lucca
• 1833 The Last Man
• 1837 Falkner

3
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman (1792)William Godwin, An Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice (1793)
(1759 1797)
(1756 - 1836)
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Timeline
1797 Mother dies ten day after giving birth 1799
1806 Mary Fanny listen to Samuel Taylor
Coleridge recite The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner 1801 Godwin marries Mary
Jane Clairmont - Charles (6 yrs) and Jane
(Claire) (4 yrs) 1811 1812 Sent to
Scotland Meets Percy Shelley on one of her trips
home 1814 Scandalous affair with Shelley leave
for France with stepsister, Claire, and
Shelley Disowned travel through
Europe 1815 Return to England, near London 1816
Travel to Lake Geneva, Switzerland to Villa
Diodati Lord Byron John Polidori,
Claire, Mary and Shelley write ghost stories.
Frankenstein is born.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• 1813 Queen Mab
• 1818 Ozymandias
• 1820 Prometheus Unbound

1792 - 1882
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Galvanism
A Galvanized Corpse. Harpers Weekly. 1836
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1780 -1790 Luigi Galvani Allesandro Volta

• Animal Electricity Electricity applied to the
  body tissue of dissected animals produces muscle
  movement.
• 1791 Galvani believes electrical fluid emanates
  from the brain.
• Life is identified with electricity from an
  organic source, like a battery.

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Natural Philosophers

• Cornelius Agrippa Three Books of Occult
  Philosophy On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the
  Arts and Sciences An Invective Declamation
  (1530) On the Nobility and Superiority of the
  Female Sex
• Paracelsus Great Surgery Book (1530)
• Albertus Magnus est. study of nature as
  legitimate science within Christianity

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Literary Allusions in Frankenstein

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor
  Coleridge
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Plutarch Lives
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang
  Goethe
• Ruins of Empires by Volney

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Purpose of Literary Allusion

• Literary allusion creates a comparison of the
  characters and ideas presented in the text.
• By alluding to work familiar to everyone, all
  connotations in one is transferred to the other.
• A great deal can be expressed in a title,
  character or epigram

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Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667
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Satan rebels against God, is thrown out of heaven
with his army, and tempts Eve to eat the
forbidden fruit, which gets them thrown out of
Eden, hence Paradise Lost.
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Book 10 743-5

• Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
• To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
• From darkness to promote me?

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Romantic Comments by William Blake on Miltons
Satan Those who restrain desire do so because
theirs is weak enough to be restrained and the
restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs
the unwilling. And being restrained, it by
degrees becomes passive, till it is only the
shadow of desire. The history of this is written
in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is
called Messiah. And the original Archangel, or
possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is
called the Devil or Satan, and his children are
called Sin Death. The reason Milton wrote in
fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at
liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without
knowing it. From The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, ca. 179093
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Myth of Prometheus

• Prometheus, a wise Titan, fought with Zeus
  against other Titans. He created man to walk
  upright and gave him fire. He tricked Zeus to
  take offering of bones and fat, leaving meaty
  part for man. Zeus stole mans fire in anger,
  which Prometheus returned. Zeus created Pandora
  to punish man, and chained Prometheus to a rock
  in Caucasus Mountains and had an eagle tear at
  his liver day and night. Freed by Heracles and
  sacrifice of Centaur.

Scott Eaton
Prometheus Forethought
16
The Legacy of Frankenstein

• The Bride of Frankenstein
• The Curse of Frankenstein
• Blackenstein
• Ghost of Frankenstein
• The Bride of Frankenstein
• Young Frankenstein
• Frankenstein Unbound

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Adaptations

• More differences than similarities
• 1920 Rise in Eugenics Nature vs. Nurture
  Frankensteins monster is given brain of a
  criminal.
• Monster communicates with guttural grunts and
  moans.

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Topics in Novel

• Dangerous Knowledge
• Impact of Nature
• Ambition
• Isolation
• Loss of Innocence
• Responsibility

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Sublime

• Longinus "On the Sublime"
• Edmund Burke "A Philosophical Inquiry into the
  Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful