Letteratura - FRANKENSTEIN, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Letteratura

Scarica Letteratura - FRANKENSTEIN e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Letteratura solo su Docsity! Bellini Elisabetta, Pasotto Elena, Roselli Ada, Stucchi Giulia F R A N K E N STE IN Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Oscar Classici Mondadori 1994 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin nasce il 30 agosto del 1797 a Londra, figlia unica del filosofo William Godwin e della femminista Mary Wollstonecraft. Il padre è noto soprattutto per il trattato “An enquiry concerning political justice”. La madre, la cui opera principale è “A vindication of the rights of women” muore dieci giorni dopo il parto. Godwin si risposa con la vedova Mary Jane Clairmont. L’infanzia di Mary si incupisce grazie alla palese preferenza della matrigna per i propri due figli; benchè sia la pupilla prediletta del padre, Mary cresce molto sola: legge di tutto, il luogo preferito è la tomba della madre. Nel 1812 il poeta Shelley scrive a Godwin proponendosi come discepolo e in seguito inizia a frequentare casa Godwin dove conosce Mary. Fra i due sboccia l’amore che si concluderà con la celebrazione del matrimonio il 30 dicembre del 1816. Nel frattempo Mary, Shelley e alcuni amici si stabiliscono per un breve periodo nella tenuta di Lord Byron, il quale, a causa del brutto tempo, che costringeva il gruppo all’interno delle loro case, propone l’idea di gareggiare, ciascuno con un racconto che fosse il più terrificante possibile. E’ qui che hanno luogo le letture di racconti di fantasmi, e le discussioni sugli esperimenti di Erasmus Darwin per animare la materia inorganica e sulla possibilità di ridare vita ad un corpo già cadavere. Queste riflessioni si imprimono nella mente di Mary come uno spaventoso incubo dal quale ella trae l’ispirazione per la composizione del suo romanzo: Frankestein. Il romanzo vedrà luce nel marzo del 1818, ma l’edizione definitiva esce solo nel 1831. Mary Shelley muore a Londra l’1 febbraio del 1851. I NARRATORI “E’ ormai una convenzione della critica parlare della struttura di questo romanzo come di un congegno di scatole cinesi”. Il racconto infatti non si basa su un unico livello narrativo, ma si snoda attraverso tre piani differenti: quello più esterno del diario epistolare di Robert Walton, quello di Frankestein che racconta in flash-back ed infine quello del mostro che parla al lettore in modo diretto. L’autobiografia del mostro, raccontata a Victor Frankestein, suo creatore, è contenuta all’interno della confessione fatta da Frankestein al giovane esploratore inglese Robert Walton, il quale a sua volta la trascrive nelle lettere indirizzate alla lontana sorella: la signora Margaret Saville. IL TEMPO << Può sembrare strano che un simile fatto sia accaduto in pieno 18° secolo...>>. Da questa frase pronunciata da Frankenstain e dalla datazione delle lettere che Walton invia alla sorella lontana possiamo dedurre che il romanzo è ambientato nel 18° secolo. Dalla corrispondenza tra fratello e sorella si capisce che l’arco di tempo nel quale si svolge la vicenda è di dieci mesi, da dicembre a settembre, mentre il racconto in flash-back del mostro e di Frankenstein è la storia di tutta una vita. DI CHE COSA SI RITIENE COLPEVOLE FRANKENSTEIN? “...ora che avevo finito, la bellezza del sogno svaniva e un orrore e un disgusto soffocanti mi riempiono il cuore”. Il dottor Frankestein dopo aver lavorato duramente per due lunghi anni con il solo pensiero di infondere vita alla sua creatura, una volta terminato il suo lavoro è incapace di provare gioia ma solo orrore alla vista di quell’essere così abominevole. Con il passare del tempo l’orrore viene affiancato da un logorante senso di colpa; il mostro oltre ad essere repellente alla vista degli uomini coltiva anche un’indole malvagia che lo porta a compiere una serie di delitti. Frankestein si rende conto di aver dato vita a una creatura capace solo di portare distruzione e morte e per questo si ritiene il principale colpevole delle atrocità commesse dal mostro. Tenta così di porre fine a tutto ciò mettendo a repentaglio la sua stessa vita. THE AUTHOR Mary Shelley was born on 30 August 1797 and was an important figure in the Romantic Era of English Literature. Her mother was a famous feminist, her father a philosopher and novelist. She also married a poet. She realized the idea of Frankenstein when she was at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron and her next husband. She wrote the novel after a series of calamities in her life: the worst were the suicides of her sister and Shelly's wife. After the suicides, Mary and Shelley married. They went to live in Italy, where their two children died, so she never fully recovered from this trauma. When Mary was only twenty-four her husband died, too. Poverty forced her to live in England, a country she hated because of its social system. Mary Shelley died in 1851 of a brain tumor. DATE OF PUBLICATION Frankenstein was published for the first time in 1818. THE STORY Robert Walton, the captain of a ship, recounts his adventures through a series of letters to his sister in England. Walton meets Victor Frankenstein in the seas near the North Pole. Frankenstein tells him his story, beginning from his early life: his chemical studies at the university and his destre to know the secret of life. He steals old body parts from a cemetery and create a new monstrous body. Finally he gives it life. However, the creature appears so horrible that he runs away, allowing the creature to escape. He doesn’t have any news from the monster, until his little brother is killed by him. His people doesn’t know anything and accuse and execute a family friend. One day while Victor is alone in the mountains, the monster appears to him, tells his story, and begs his creator to make him another creature a female. Victor refuses, but finally he’s convinced by the monster's menaces. He leaves on a journey for England to organize his creation on an island. One night, the monster appears at his window and he becomes conscious of the fool project he’s going to realize, so destroys the new creation. The monster becomes a fury and promises that he will be with Victor on his wedding night. Shortly after his return, Victor marries his loved cousin Elizabeth. Victor is afraid: he thinks that he will be murdered on his wedding night, so he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. But when he hears Elizabeth scream realizes that the monster has killed his wife and promises to dedicate the rest of his life to finding the monster and realizing his revenge. At this point in the story, Frankenstein and Walton meet. Victor, already ill, worsens and dies. Walton returns to the room where Victor's body is and sees the monster, who describes to him his suffering. Now that his creator has died, he can also end his suffering. He leaves for the mountains to die. PLACE & TIME The letters that tell us the story are written in a period of nine months, but they narrate a story that comprehends the whole life of a man, Victor Frankenstein. Even if we don’t know the exact years, we know that all the story is situated in XVIII century. These letters are written from all over the Europe: Petersburg, Archangel… but the story is situated in Switzerland, Great Britain and also in the North Pole. MY NOTES ABOUT THE BOOK It’s a good book and I really enjoyed myself reading it. Mary Shelley tells us that we can’t control nature, that we’re not God, and I liked this new vision of the eternal fight between Good and Evil. In this new version, it’s more difficult to find the real good one and the evil one. If you think about the monster, you see that he only doesn’t want to be alone, and that’s why he’s evil… and if you interpretate the novel like this it’s hard to answer the question: “Who’s the evil one?”. Frankenstein Mary Shelley ‘Frankenstein’ is the most famous book written by Mary Shelley. She was born in 1797. her fathre was the philosopher William Godwin and her mother the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She married the poet Shelley, and then she travelled in Europe, spending summers in Switzerland. During the summer of 1816, owing to an idea of Lord Byron which visited Shelley’s, Mary began the story of Frankenstein, that was published in 1818. After the death of her husband, she lived a while in Italy, and then returned in England with her son, and there she began to werite articles and essays; she wrote also poetries. Mary Shelley died in 1851 and was buried with her parents. The plot of Frankenstein is quite simple: Robert Walton, an explorer that wants to arrive to the North Pole, stopped ny mountains of ice, meets Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who seems exhausted and near death. Walton helps Frankenstein. They become friends, and when the explorer reveals his dreams to the scientist, Frankenstein becomes sad and tells his history in order to convince Walton to abandon his projects. He begins his history: Frankenstein is from a good-family of Switzerland, interested in science and in the causes of natural events. During his stay at university of Ingolstadt, he achieves to discover the secret of life, and uses it to make a giant man from parts of dead bodies. But when he realizes that he creates an ugly monster, he refuses him. The monster, which is essentially good, after a period of learning in the forest near Ingolstadt, tries to become part of the society, but he is expulsed from a village. So he meet refuge in a poor home in the forest, where, standing hidden, he learnes to speak and to read. He realizes that the family is good, and so he tries to reveal himself, but he is again attacked. He escapes, and achieves to save a girl from drowning, but a man, seeing the monster near to the girl, fires against him. The monster becomes so bad. Arrived in Switzerland, he kills the young brother of Dr.Frankenstein and causes the death of Justine Moritz, a Frankenstein family’s friend. Then he asks to his creator help, in order to obtain a companion. At first Dr.Frankenstein agrees, and goes to England and then to Scotland, fllowed by the monster, but after he destroyes his second creation because he consideres very dangerous for mankind the presence of two monsters. So the monster kills the better friend of Dr. Frankenstein, Henry Clerval, and the wife of Frankenstein, Elizabeth. The scientist’s father died for ache, while Frankenstein becomes mad for the pain, and when he settles down, he swears his revenge against the monster. the monster is satisfied of this, and so it begins a long hunt, that atke away from the world two Frankensteins, toward the north, passing from lands of Tartary and Russia, toward the North Pole. Dr.Frankenstein ends his tale. After few days he dies. An evening, when Walton is writing a letter to his sister, he hears sounds, and he meets the monster, which is criyng near the Dr.Frankenstein lifeless body. He cries because he lose his creator and he cannot asks forgiveness for his acts. Then, after a brief speech with Walton, he jumpes out of the ship and disappears forever. In this book Mary Shelley expressed many of the ideas of romantic age, and took inspiration from precedent philosophical and literary experiences, showing so her knowledge and her culture. In the text there are influences of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. In fact the text is present in the education of the monster, and the monster can be considered a modern Adam, that feels a natural sense of respect for his creator, his God, the man, who wants to overcome God, going beyond natural limits. In fact Dr.Frankenstein, blinded by his mad enthusiasm, doesn’t respect moral sense, dares death and female role in creation of life, takes God’s place. But, as Satan, Dr.Frankenstein seek for forbidden knowledge. The scientist cal also be considered a modern Faust, a man that accept every compromise in order to obtain his aim, or a modern Prometheus, a creator of life. Mary Shelley took also inspiration from philosophers of that time, as Hume, Locke and Rousseau. In fact, the young Victor Frankenstein is fascinated by the causes of naturals events, and search a relationship between cause and affect (empiricism of Hume); after his creation the monster lives for a while in the forest, where he feels goodness for the world, but when he tries to enter in the society, he is refused and for this he is corrupted (according to the Rousseau’s thought and the myh of the noble savage and that of human ingratitude); finally, in the same part of the text, the reader can recognize the importance of education, experiences and sensations, that are very important in the human development (according to Locke). The book is also useful to reflect about human injustices, that are still modern, as the racism, the margination of different people, the ethics of transplantation, the human moral, the responsibility of human actions. Finally, in ‘Frankenstein’ it is possible to recognize fears of the romantic period: Dr. Frankenstein, at thhe begins of the book, represents totally the figure of enlightnment. In fact the scientist is thirst of knowledge, he is inmersed in his studies, he is trustful in the world and in his possibilities, he wants to help the whole human race with his work. But after (the romantic man) he is afraid of his creation, he feels himself alone and disillusioned, he meets peace and serenity in the nature (as the short holiday in the forest near Ingolstadt made by Frankenstein and his friend Henry Clerval), he tries to rejoin himself to his fellows. Romantic man feels the world sad and bitter, and he wants to disappear from world definitively, dying, because he feels consequences of his actions very hard. In fact, Dr.Frankenstein, creating a human being, putted to him feelings ad sensibility. Now, can he destroy a creation that has his own life, that suffer, that has his own law to be happy? How can man know what is the better thing? So there is an indefinite situation, reflection of human dualism. The scientist and the monster have the same name, and for this reason it is possible to consider two Frankensteins as the double aspect of the same person, the rational part and the instinctive part. This contrast brings, at the end of the book and then at the end of romantic man’s life, a strong inner weakness, the alienation of man from the world, and the inevitable destruction of the same man, the unic being able to be so ‘powerful and magnificent (noble and godlike), and, at the same time, so wretched and wicked (evil)’