Home » Items tagged with 'Mary Shelley'
Items tagged with 'Mary Shelley'
Article: Reading Frankenstein in 1818
1818, the year of Frankenstein’s first publication, is a frequently overlooked context for Mary Shelley’s novel, overshadowed as it is both by Frankenstein’s afterlives and by the moment of its first conception in Switzerland, 1816, the ‘Year Without a Summer’. What might it mean for a novel that has transcended literary history and achieved mythic status to be re-situated as one of the novels of 1818? The article considers recent topics of critical interest, including ecocritical readings of the novel in the shadow of Mount Tambora and the topicality of the frame narrative in relation to histories of arctic exploration, before focusing on the politics of Frankenstein. Many critics have read the novel as a belated allegory of the French Revolution, which leads inexorably towards an interpretation of Frankenstein as an anti-revolutionary fiction. For the readers of 1818, however, it is the unfolding events of post-Waterloo Britain, not the French Revolution, that constitutes the primary political context, producing a more open-ended and radical text. The final section of the article reads the novel in dialogue with William Hazlitt’s essay, ‘What Is the People?’, showing how both texts engage with questions agitated by the popular reform movement, including responses to tyranny and the sovereignty of the people. Continue reading
Post: Teaching Romanticism XIX: Mary Shelley’s Other Works
As part of this ongoing series on Teaching Romanticism we will consider the ways in which we lecture on and discuss individual authors, whether during author-specific modules or broader period surveys. I thought it would … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Stories 7 & 8: La Chambre
‘La Chambre Grise’ and ‘La Chambre Noire’ are companion stories that close Fantasmagoriana. Interestingly, these stories do not appear together in Gespensterbuch and not at all in Utterson’s Tales of the Dead. In her advertisement, … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 6: Le Revenant
by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg The sixth story in Fantasmagoriana, ‘Le Revenant’ / ‘Der Geist des Verstorbenen,’ is the first story not to be translated in Tales of the Dead. The ghost motifs in this story … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 5: L’ Heure fatale
by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg The fifth story in both Gespensterbuch and Fantasmagoriana (vol 2), ‘L’Heure fatale’ / ‘The Fated Hour,’ is the second story in Tales of the Dead. It appears to have been more … Continue reading
Post: ‘Your sincere admirer’: the Shelleys’ letters as indicators of collaboration in 1821.
Anna has studied at the University of Liverpool (BA) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil). She is now a second year doctoral candidate in English Literature at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York. Anna’s … Continue reading
Post: “Take me – one kiss – ”: The Active Silence in the Shelleys’ 1814 Love Letters.
Lucy Johnson is in her third year of an English PhD at the University of Chester. Her thesis examines representations of the ‘metaleptic echo’ in the writing of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 4: La Morte Fiancée
The fourth story, ‘La Morte Fiancée’ / ‘The Death-Bride,’ opens the second volumes of Gespensterbuch and Fantasmagoriana. Along with ‘Les Portraits du Famille’ / ‘The Family Portraits,’ Mary Shelley recalls the reading of ‘La Morte … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 3: La Tête de mort
The third story in Fantasmagoriana is a personal favourite. While the influence of ‘La Tête de Mort’ on Shelley’s Frankenstein is minimal at best, there are several intertextual tidbits related to this story that are … Continue reading
Post: Teaching Romanticism XI: Percy Bysshe Shelley
by Daniel Cook As part of this ongoing series on Teaching Romanticism we will consider the ways in which we lecture on and discuss individual authors, whether during author-specific modules or broader period surveys. I … Continue reading
Review: George C. Grinnell, The Age of Hypochondria (rev.)
Hypochondria is a highly suggestive topic for Romantic criticism, as well as for the period itself. The study of how minds and bodies might get entangled in all things psychosomatic (a coinage of Samuel Taylor … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 2: Les Portraits de famille
As noted in my previous blogs on Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, the first story read by the Byron-Shelley circle on that stormy night in June 1816, ‘L’Amour muet’, was not as influential and well-known as the … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana, Story 1: L’Amour muet
by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg Happy New Year Everyone! My introductory blog ‘last year’ – actually only a few weeks ago – provided a brief overview of Fantasmagoriana (1812) the text that inspired the famous ghost-storytelling contest at … Continue reading
Post: Teaching Romanticism II: Examination
I know, I know, this isn’t Christmassy. But it is timely. And, I promise, there will be poetry – oodles of the stuff – in the new year. In fact, if you read to the … Continue reading
Post: Frankenstein and Fantasmagoriana: An Introductory Blog
by Maximiliaan van Woudenberg Greetings Fellow Romanticists and Print Culturists, I am excited about my first blog-posting for Romantic Textualities. Thanks to the editors for the opportunity and their assistance. Like many of us, ever … Continue reading
