The endurance of "Frankenstein": essays on Mary Shelley's novel

by George Lewis Levine (Editor), U.C. Knoepflmacher (Editor)

Twelve major essays examining the work through traditions, biography, context, texture, drama, and film

Genres: Nonfiction, Victor Frankenstein

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the earliest books of legitimate literary criticism of Frankenstein, and is one of the things that helped legitimize the novel. Apparently I've gone a bit mad, since back in college I usually didn't much enjoy reading literary criticism and yet now I'm reading a three hundred page book of it for fun. In fairness, there's some interesting stuff here even aside from the fact that this book is historically interesting. Twelve chapters divided into five sections cover topics from Frankenstein's place in the literary canon to the influence of both family and society on Shelley, as well as the use of language and the ways the novel have been adapted to stage and screen.

These chapters are often jargon heavy and I'm sure I could've gotten a little bit more out of some of them if I'd taken the time to try and decode them in full, but as it is, there are still some interesting thoughts here. I definitely need to read my dual biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, because based on the discussions here about how her family life influenced her novel, Mary Shelley had a truly fascinating life. I'm also interested in tracking down more of Ellen Moers' writing because it seems she turns to Wuthering Heights next, which I would be very interested to explore in the context of the "female Gothic". The chapters about politics of revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries has given me a fiction book or two to read and made me more interested in learning about these reactions, since they include an early Illuminati conspiracy theory.

I think perhaps the two most interesting articles due to the thoughts they prevent are those by Philip Stevick and William Nestrick. The former analyses why Frankenstein and other horror can be so frightening in the moment and yet so comic afterwards, concluding that this is due to their dreamlike natures. I feel like this would be a neat idea to explore in terms of other horror fiction. The latter, while a bit disappointing in some respects, does raise the interesting idea that Frankenstein is a popular subject in film precisely because the process of assembling the monster and the process of creating a film are effectively the same - disparate parts are stitched together to form a new, more perfect version of reality. (Sadly the preceding discussion of theater and film adaptations didn't really point me to anything new.)

I can't say that I exactly loved this book, but it did have some good and interesting discussions of Frankenstein, and I could certainly see myself drawing on it should I ever need to write about the novel in an academic context. Plus it's pointed me towards some other pieces of fiction I'd like to read, which is always a fun thing.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nestrick: Frankenstein and the Nature of Film Narrative

[Andjar]

a great book