•     "The philosophy of the beautiful or of art; a system of principles for the appreciation of the beautiful, etc.; the distinctive underlying principles of a work of art or a genre, the works of an artist, the arts of a culture, etc." ("Aesthetics").

•     On Beauty, see p. 78 (2.4), 91 (2.7)

• cf. Race, Sublime, Sensibility
  

• Story of the novel's creation: see P. B. Shelley's Preface (6), and Mary Shelley's 1831 Preface, p. 166-67.

• Walton's letter to his sister begins on 11 Dec. and ends 9 months and a day later, on 12 Sept.

• Mary (Walton) Saville = MWS (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

• Birth in reverse: Frankenstein creates and then convalesces: "This was the commencement of a nervous fever, which confined me for several months" (Shelley 39).
  

• Victor's murdered brother, William, has the same name as the Shelleys' deceased child.
  

Canon

    "4. The collection or list of books of the Bible accepted by the Christian Church as genuine and inspired. Also transf., any set of sacred books; also, those writings of a secular author accepted as authentic" ("Canon").

    "The unique place of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in the canon has much to do with what it has engendered. Widely appropriated and transformed in popular culture, Shelley's tale of transgressive creation and vengeful destruction has also issued forth an unruly brood of high-culture interpretive and imaginative offspring" (Ball 31).

Chivalry

• "The knightly system of feudal times with its attendant religious, moral, and social code, usages, and practices. age of chivalry: the period during which this prevailed" ("Chivalry").
  

Citizen

•  "An inhabitant of a city or (often) of a town; esp. one possessing civic rights and privileges, a burgess or freeman of a city" ("Citizen").
  

• "The prospect of the coming-to-life of the sexed citizen brings with it a human crisis presented in the text in terms of a future race war" (Reese 63).
  

Class

• Shelley 18-19, 41
  

Creature

• "A human being; a person, an individual" (2nd definition of "Creature," most used around 1800).
  

• "Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow-creatures . . . " (Shelley 45).
  

• "when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character . . . she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures" (Shelley 56).
  

• See also Shelley 152

Doubles

• Doppelgänger = double (walker)

• Which characters stand as doubles for other ones?

• Victor and his creation
  

• Walton/Frankenstein

• mother, Caroline Beaufort / William (51/1.6)
  

• Elizabeth/Frankenstein

• Justine/mother

• "While the Doctor and monster double one another, they also prove, in the overlapping of their positions, to be no longer identical to themselves. The work of the Doctor's hands (the creation of this ranging, destructive other) has alienated him from himself and his authorship and from the site of this alienation, he lacks the 'power'--of either sensibility or reason--to judge the monster's request. The fact that his narration can move the Doctor allows the monster some footing in the Rousseauvian fiction concerning the life of the human species" (Reese52).
  

    related to Dichotomies 

• " b. gen. Division into two. Something divided into two or resulting from such a division; something paradoxical or ambivalent" ("Dichotomy").
  

• " In 'The Art of Fiction' and especially in the later prefaces [Henry] James spoke as a major writer reflecting on the novel. After him, the debates about realism and romance, realism and naturalism, fiction and fact, and art and science that dominated much of the nineteenth century shifted to new grounds, roughly contained in the dichotomy variously demarcated as between content and form, subject matter and technique, or life and art. Following James’s 'art of fiction,' discussions of the genre highlighted the 'craft,' 'technique,' 'method,' or 'structure' of fiction as much as its content, relation to reality, or 'life'" (Groden n. pag.).
  

• Dichotomies in Frankenstein:
  

- nature / city
- man / monster
- man / woman

- writer / reader

Empire

• Makdisi, Saree. Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print. ( PR468.I49 M35 1998)

• Richardson, Alan, and Sonia Hofkosh. Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780-1834. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Print. (PR457 .R6447 1996)
  
  
  

Europe

• "The European Union or its predecessors" ("Europe).
  

• The European community includes England and France so far, and will grow to include, as the novel progresses, Geneva (Victor's native town), Italy (site of Elizabeth Lavenza's birth), Germany (where Victor attends University), Holland (where Victor and his friend Henry Clerval tour), the Orkney Isles (where Victor undertakes the creation of a second female creature), and Ireland (where Henry dies). Yet Frankenstein repeatedly suggests that 'Europe' may be a phantom, a spectral placeholder beyond and opposed to the clear boundaries of nation and republic, even as 'Europeans' appear in contradistinction to savage 'giants' (18). Europe exists as a category over and against the strong persistence of 'native' lands and languages--note that the "European" Victor is soon denominated a 'foreigner' by Robert Walton. The turning of a fellow 'human' and 'European' into a specifically Genevese French-speaking 'foreigner' shows how humans identify each another through increasingly differentiated and estranging categories. The monster strains against and defines the limits of these kinds and levels of classification" (McLane 964-65). 
  

• "Given the novel's elision of 'European' and 'human,' it is not at all surprising that the monster looks to language and to European history and literature as the media for his transformation into a member of the community. In this he registers the nineteenth-century turn-to-language, in which scholars increasingly established the study of language as the basis of the human sciences (evidenced in the proliferation of universal grammars, the birth of philology, the development of comparative linguistics" (McLane 972). 

• Shelley 104/2.9, 148/3.7

Genre

• "Kind, sort, style" ("Genre").
  

Scholars trace Frankenstein to the gothic novel, the Bildungsroman, memoir, and travel literature (see Novel).

Gothic

• "Of or pertaining to the Goths and their language" ("Gothic").

• "the Gothic is identified with the primitive for specific ideological purposes, and these are achieved in two main ways. In one, the Gothic is associated with the barbaric and civilized in order to define that which is other to the values of the civilized present. Alternatively, the Gothic is still associated with the primitive but this primitive has now become identified with the true, but lost, foundations of a culture. The Gothic past is consequently seen as retaining not only more power and vigour than the present, but also, in a strange way, more truly civilized values . . . the Gothic always remains the symbolic site of a culture's discursive struggle to define and claim possession of the civilized, and to abject, or throw off, what is seen as other to that civilized self" (Punter and Byron 5).

• "In its connection to the 'life-principle' debate, therefore, Frankenstein can be seen to set out for the first time the concern that dominates Gothic's engagement with both science and industry over the following centuries: the disruption of the accepted notions of the human" (Punter and Byron 21).
  

• Duggett, Tom. Gothic Romanticism: Architecture, Politics, and Literary Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print. (PR590 .D84 2010)
  
  

Johann Heinrich Füssli, The Nightmare (1781), Oil on Canvas, Institute of Fine Arts, Detroit

History

• Chandler, James. England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998. Print. (Sprague Lib.: PR457 .C39 1998)

• Christensen, Jerome. Romanticism at the End of History. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Print. (PR468.H57 C47 2000)
  
  

Human

• "Of the nature of the human race; that is a human, or consists of human beings; belonging to the species Homo sapiens or other (extinct) species of the genus Homo" ("Human").
  

• "Walton's very syntax performs the negative construction of European being: Victor 'was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage . . . but an European' (18). Walton's report introduces question of seeming and being, appearance and essence, which might allow for an ambiguation of his categories. Yet his very facility with such constructions deserves attention: he provides in embryo the terms and terrain which the novel will eventually fix and specify (savage = not European = not human). In such language Walton introduces one dimension of the anthropological problem of the novel" (McLane 964).
  

• "He is an alien but in a remarkably human way, which is to say that he is excluded from the human in general because of his relation to a group--a group that does not yet exist" (Reese 59).
  

• See also Doubles, Europe, Language, Law, Rights of Man

Language

"a godlike science"  (Shelley 77)

• Walton presumably speaks English.

• As a Genevan, Mr. Frankenstein speaks French, but he also reads Latin and Greek. He studies in Ingolstadt, a German-speaking town. 
  

• The monster learns Parisian French from the DeLaceys.

• Frankenstein and Clerval have to speak English in England.
  

• "Yet it is important to note that, whereas Safie has 'her own' language and is merely acquiring another, the monster is being translated into language: he had no language of his own and, unlike a human infant, was unable without administered instruction to 'master' (109) their language" (McLane 973).
  

• See also Chivalry, Europe; Shelley, 154
  

    > Shelley's language?

Law

• "The body of rules, whether proceeding from formal enactment or from custom, which a particular state or community recognizes as binding on its members or subjects" ("Law"). 
  

• Jonathan Grossman: " . . . this novel amplifies an ideological, novelistic conception of modern subjects as necessarily--even in their affective and and familial bonds--subject to and produced by the law courts" (81).
  

• "The daemon's drama immediately emphasizes the fact that the laws that can only identify him as a perpetrator, but not as a victim, apply to embodied subjects; beyond that they apply specifically to human bodies, the humanly embodied subject. It is not the dictates of reason but the limitations of the empirically human that debar the daemon's recognition before the law" (Reese 54).
  

In Shelley: Justine's tale, 69 (2.2), 83, 85, 87 (2.6), 160 (3.7)

Literature

• "The result or product of literary activity; written works considered collectively; a body of literary works produced in a particular country or period, or of a particular genre. Also: such a body of works as a subject of study or examination (freq. with modifying word specifying the language, period, etc., of literature studied)" ("Literature").
  

• Frankenstein reads works of Cornelius Agrippa, "(1486-1535), German physician, author of De Occulta Philosophia (1531), and reputed magician" (Hunter fn. 21), who was concerned with "the occult or the supernatural" (Hunter fn. 22).
  

• Even after he turns to modern science like Franklin's electrical experiments, Frankenstein enjoys reading ancient texts notorious for their erroneous view of science, Leclerc and Pliny (Hunter fn. 23).

• Monster hears Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf, comte de Volney’s The Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolution of Empires being read, , Les Ruines, ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires (1791), an essay on the philosophy of history whereby all religions fall b/c common truth of each is recognized (79).

Monster reads a novel of sensibility about a man who kills himself for love (Werther); an epic poem about good, evil, God, and Satan (Milton's Paradise Lost); and an historical treatise on republicanism and great figures (Plutarch's Lives, one of the most popular Classical texts Romantic-era writers read), all texts MWS read in 1815 (Gilbert and Gubar 331) (86).

For Shelley, "books appear to have functioned as her surrogate parents, pages and words standing in for flesh and blood" (Gilbert and Gubar 331).

Monster

• "Originally: a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms, and is frequently of great size and ferocious appearance. Later, more generally: any imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening" ("Monster").
  

"The monster in Shelley's novel is denied that status of a fellow creature because . . . Frankenstein never realizes that monster, like giant, is only a trope. He never realizes that the appellation 'gigantic monster' is only a figure for a man: a figure of a man. Frankenstein, in short, is not a good reader" (Marshall 206).

            Related to Golem

• "In Jewish legend, a human figure made of clay, etc., and supernaturally brought to life; in extended use, an automaton, a robot" ("Golem").

• a creature made out of clay that can exact revenge in Jewish tradition

Mont Blanc

Mt. Blanc, Switzerland

• On PBS's poem: "In effect, the poet's dual vision in this poem is made possible by collapsed distance atop the mountain; he creates a panopticon that brings the natural world into focus even as it opens a lens into the infinite" (Wry 32-3).

• Shelley 48-50, 139
  

• See also Sublime

Narrative

     "2b. Literary Criticism. The part of a text, esp. a work of fiction, which represents the sequence of events, as distinguished from that dealing with dialogue, description, etc.; narration as a literary method or genre."

    > Multiple narrators:

    Walton's letters to his sister, Mrs. (Walton) Saville (1-17)
    M. (= Monsieur) Victor Frankenstein's tale

    Alphonse's letter
    Elizabeth's letter

    the monster's tale
    Felix DeLacey and Safie's tale

Noble Savage

• The ideal that humans, in their natural habitat, escape the ills and immorality of society

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origins and the Foundations of Inequality among Men, 1754): man in his supposedly natural state lives in harmony in nature and with his fellow creatures

• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) dir. W. Herzog, based on the true story of an eighteenth-century man found to have been raised in a barn without much human contact

• Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, The Wild Boy of Aveyron (1807), named Victor (Butler 410-11)
  

• Peter of Hamelin discovered in 1720s England (Butler 411)

Race

• Ellis, Markman. The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print. (Sprague Lib.: PR858.S45 E55 1996)
  
• Richardson, Alan, and Sonia Hofkosh. Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780-1834. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Print. (PR457 .R6447 1996)

Religion

• Ryan, Robert M. The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789-1824. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print. (PR590 .R93 1997)
  
  

• "A state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; spec. a state without a monarchy. Also: a government, or system of government, of such a state; a period of government of this type" ("Republic").
  

Vol. I:  Closely analyze one of the scenes below. What characteristics and traits of European Romantic literature do they reflect?

1. p. 10: Robert Walton’s letter to his sister

2. p. 22: Victor Frankenstein’s medieval education

3. p. 32: Frankenstein’s motivation to create new life

4. p. 39: First page of Elizabeth’s letter 

5. p. 53: Justine

Science

• 1. "The state or fact of knowing; knowledge or cognizance of something specified or implied; also, with wider reference, knowledge (more or less extensive) as a personal attribute. Now only Theol. in the rendering of scholastic terms (see quot. 1728), and occas. Philos. in the sense of ‘knowledge’ as opposed to ‘belief’ or ‘opinion’" ("Science").
  

• 4. "In a more restricted sense: A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain" ("Science").
  

• "The word "science" had yet to restrict its range to what we now denominate the physical and social sciences; yet Shelley carefully differentiates among the bodies of knowledge available to and cultivated by the various figures in the novel" (McLane 970).
  

Sensibility

• "4a. Emotional consciousness; glad or sorrowful, grateful or resentful recognition of a person's conduct, or of a fact or a condition of things" ("Sensibility").
  

• "the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union" (Shelley 102)

• "His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations" (Shelley 102)

• "I lost sensation" (Shelley 142).
  

• From Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1761): "Was it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face."
  

• See also Human, Sublime, Sympathy

• Ellis, Markman. The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print. (Sprague Lib.: PR858.S45 E55 1996)
  
  

  Sufferings of Young Werther

Slave

• "One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights" ("Slave").
  

• "Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery" (Shelley 102).
  

• Lee, Debbie. Slavery and the Romantic Imagination. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Print. (PR468.S55 L44 2004)
  
  

Species

Sympathy

Sublime

• " 4. Belonging to or designating the highest sphere of thought, existence, or human activity; intellectually or spiritually elevated" ("Sublime").
  

• Miall calls the sublime "an extreme mode of defamliarization" (155).
  

• See also Aesthetics, Mont Blanc

• In Shelley: p. 64-6 (2.2)
• 
  
• Costelloe, Timothy M. The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print. (BH301.S7 S833 2012)
  
  

• From terreur: "The state of being terrified or extremely frightened; intense fear or dread; an instance or feeling of this. Also in in terror (of something or someone)" ("Terror").
  

Vitalism

• "Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?" (Shelley 31).

• vitalist position: John Abernethy, An Enquiry into the Probability and Rationality of Mr Hunter's 'Theory of Life' (London: Longman, 1814; described in Butler, 406).
  

• materialist position: William Lawrence, An Introduction to Comparative Anatomy (London, 1816) and Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man (London: Callow, 1817/1819), as described in Butler, 408.
  

What names does Victor call himself, and his creation?

Sublime

• " 4. Belonging to or designating the highest sphere of thought, existence, or human activity; intellectually or spiritually elevated" ("Sublime").
  

• Miall calls the sublime "an extreme mode of defamliarization" (155).
  

• See also Aesthetics, Mont Blanc

• In Shelley: p. 64-6 (2.2)

Similarities between Rousseau's Confessions, Goethe, and Shelley's Frankenstein

• Shelley’s preface mentions German scientists (5)

• use of letters / epistolary style

• Victor challenges limits of science and knowledge

• 21-2: ignores father’s warnings to abandon occult science  - defiance of Rousseau, Werther in ignoring family’s wishes

• In the process he challenges spiritual authority (though not implicit in novel, this religious abomination)
  

• 21-2: tinkers with alchemical pursuits, not just the natural sciences (German medieval scholars)

• 22: "search of the philosopher's stone"

• 24: Elizabeth has to become mother to step-siblings like Lotte does for Werther’s family

• 35: abandons his creation – like Rousseau’s father abandons him

• 50: unjustly accused maid // stolen ribbon scene in Confessions

• 55: Justine = unjustly accused servant locked out from gates of Geneva draws on Rousseau's experience being locked out in Confessions