Frankenstein

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Written by Mary Shelley.

Published in 1818.

an epistolary novel

a frame novel

a romantic novel

a gothic novel

a science fiction novel

Agree or disagree? 

1. Human beings are innately good. 

2. Parents are obligated to love their children.

3. Evil in human nature ultimately originates from rejection. 

4. There is a limit to what human beings should try to know or understand about the universe.

5. Exploration and advances in science and technology can only lead to progress for mankind and the environment. 

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment, otherwise known as the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment, was a very influential philosophical movement which started in Europe and later spread in North America. This took place from the late 17th to the 18th century (late 1600s to the end of the 1700s) which is dubbed as the “Century of Philosophy” since it was a time of increased interest and the desire to be “enlightened” on various fields specially epistemology, individual perspectives, and natural science. 

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism, also referred to as the Romantic Era, was a movement that focused on subjectivity, inspiration, and human emotions as expressed in arts, literature, and music. This started during the late 18th century (approximately 1770) in Europe in response to the rational views of the age of enlightenment. The romantic thinkers felt that reason was overemphasized and that they should put more focus on the attributes of being human such as aesthetic experience, irrational feelings, and free expression.

Tabula rasa  (Latin: "scraped tablet," though often translated "blank slate") is the notion, popularized by John Locke (1632 – 1704).

 

Locke is a philosopher whose concept known as tabula rasa, which literally means blank sheet of paper, means that people aren’t born with innate ideas. Infants must learn from an educator and as the person grows up he/she will fill that empty brain with knowledge. He stresses on the fact that experience is everything in terms of education.

 

The Social Contract  (1762), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Here’s one who thinks he is the master of others, yet he is more enslaved than they are.’

Rousseau says, unlike Locke, that humans are blank slates but rather that they come into the world with compassion and self-preservation, and the rest of their education needs to be learned through man, nature and things (experiences). Therefore he believes that humans by nature have the potential to do well and be good. The only thing that hinders people from innocence is the influence others have that can corrupt them.

Mary Shelley & Frankenstein 

Mary Shelley never received formal education, she was highly influenced by her intellectual parents. Also, at the time she was writing Frankenstein, Shelley was intellectually stimulated. She read Romantic poetry with her brilliant husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and his friends, and  she was working through John Milton’s Paradise Lost, among other great works. 

Mary Shelley was only 18, far from home, on the banks of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, during one of the worst summers on record.

It was cold and rainy that summer, and Geneva is no place to be under those conditions! While one of the prettiest places on Earth, Geneva in the cold and rain can be quite spiritually oppressive.

As all the introductions to the novel tell you, its inception came on a very special night. Thanks to the torrential rains, the Shelleys could not return to their own villa, so they had to spend the night at their friend Lord Byron’s villa, Villa Diodoti.

The house party included Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, Byron's physician.

After giving themselves a good scare reading, a collection of German ghost stories, The Fantasmagoriana, aloud, they set each other a task. Each would write a horror story for the entertainment of the rest.

Percy Shelley wrote a now-forgotten story, Byron wrote a story fragment, and Polidori began the The Vampyre, the first modern vampire tale, which he later finished and published in 1819

Romanticism 

• focus on the writer or narrator’s emotions and inner world 
• celebration of nature, beauty, and imagination
• rejection of industrialization,
• idealization of women, children, and rural life; 
• inclusion of supernatural or mythological elements;
• interest in the past; 
• frequent use of personification; 
• experimental use of language and verse forms
• emphasis on individual experience of the "sublime"
• personal freedom
• attraction to rebellion and revolution, especially concerned with human rights, individualism, freedom from oppression
• personal intuition and reliance on “natural” feelings as a guide to conduct are valued over controlled rationality

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Gothic novel

One of the attributes given to Shelley's Frankenstein  is 'Gothic'. 

What are characteristic features of Gothic novels? What is an origin of a Gothic novel? 

Watch the film The Gothic and answer an open question that follows. 

What are characteristic features of Gothic novels?