Scarica Appunti sul romanzo Frankenstein e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus (Mary Shelley 1818) Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, was a scientist, politician, and writer. Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft was a feminist and wrote the vindication of the rights of women, but also vindication of the rights of men. She died when Mary Shelley was born and in 1816 that English poet Percy Shelley brought his 18 years old Mary Shelley to visit Lord Byron in Switzerland at Villa Diodati a summer home. Because of the bad wheatear, Lord Byron suggested an indoor activity, writing, they had to made up a ghost story and read them to each other. Lord Byron wrote the fragment of a poem, John Polidori which was Byron’s personal doctor, wrote a scary story called the vampire, 17 years later will become the main inspiration for Bram Stoker's masterpiece, Dracula. Mary Shelley instead, wrote a story based on a nightmare that she had the night before, it was scary enough that the others encourage her to write a novel, and she did in fact. Mary Shelley was unusually well educated for the period in which she lived in, some intellectual says that she invented modern science-fiction at the age of 18. She was well educated because of her social class, they belonged to the middle class, they were not rich, but the middle class was emerging in the 1700, 1800 century. She could study science thanks to her father, even though she was a woman. There is a strong relationship between the Shelley’s and the south Europe, particularly Switzerland and Italy, indeed Percy’s grave is in Rome at Cimitero Cattolico. He died on the Shore of via Reggio during a trip with his friends The creature Frankenstein is probably the most famous monster in history. Mary’s monster wasn’t created by magic or alchemy, because Frankenstein the creator, was a scientist who didn’t believe in supernatural ideas, but he believed in science, electricity etcetera. Frankenstein is one of a kind because is the first science-fiction, in fact Mary Shelley is considered the mother of this genre. The novel begins with a letter, a correspondence of letters from an adventurer Robert Walton to his sister. Walton had taken an artic journey in hopes to find the north pole, his considered a scientist in the novel. In the description of Doctor Frankenstein’s creature, he quotes “His limbs are in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful.” That means that the Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t pictured ugly at all as we all are used to it. In this chapters in which Victor describes his feelings and emotions, we can consider them as Mary Shelley’s feelings and emotions. It’s like Victor is talking about the creature as Mary would about the novel. We can say that the Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus is a gothic novel for its settings, feminist science-fiction because it was written by a woman, science novel because it was written by studying most of the sciences during 19th period. It was a great success that lasted because it’s based on something well founded, science. This novel was influenced by the romantic period but by the scientific studies of the romantic period. The romantic period is full of revolutions, industrial evolutions, French revolution, American revolution. Before that there was the enlightenment period, which was a period for the knowledge, the romantic one was more rebellious. As Kreis says the romantics took up the battle cry and said, “dare to be!” instead of the enlightenment’s motto “dare to know!”. The title Mary Shelley decided to subtitle her book in reference to Prometheus. Her creation of the character Dr. Frankenstein is a modern version of the Greek myth about Prometheus. In Prometheus and Frankenstein, the protagonists are very alike in many ways. They created life, stole and got punished for what they did. There are two versions of the myth of Prometheus, one says that he stole fire from the gods for the benefits of mankind, the other says that Prometheus was the one who created the first human out of clay
