Mary
Wollstonecraft
Shelley
Born: August 30th, 1797
Died: February 1st, 1851
1818 Frankenstein
1823 Valperga: or, The Life and
Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca
1833 The Last Man
1837 Falkner
Mary Wollstonecraft, A
Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792)
William Godwin, An
(1759 – 1797)
Enquiry Concerning Political
Justice (1793)
(1756 - 1836)
Timeline
1797 Mother dies ten day after giving birth
1799 & 1806 Mary & Fanny listen to Samuel Taylor Coleridge recite “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
1801 Godwin marries Mary Jane Clairmont - Charles (6 yrs) and Jane
(Claire) (4 yrs)
1811 &1812 Sent to Scotland; Meets Percy Shelley on one of her trips home
1814 Scandalous affair with Shelley; leave for France with stepsister, Claire, and
Shelley; Disowned; travel through Europe
1815 Return to England, near London
1816 Travel to Lake Geneva, Switzerland to Villa Diodati; Lord Byron John
Polidori, Claire, Mary and Shelley write ghost stories. Frankenstein is born.
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
1813 Queen Mab
1818 Ozymandias
1820 Prometheus Unbound
1792 - 1882
Galvanism
A Galvanized Corpse. Harpers Weekly. 1836
1780 -1790
Luigi Galvani & Allesandro Volta
 “Animal Electricity” –
Electricity applied to the
body tissue of dissected
animals produces muscle
movement.
 1791 Galvani believes
electrical fluid emanates
from the brain.
 Life is identified with
electricity from an organic
source, like a battery.
Purpose of Literary
Allusion
 Literary allusion creates a comparison of the
characters and ideas presented in the text.
 By alluding to work familiar to everyone, all
connotations in one is transferred to the other.
 A great deal can be expressed in a title, character or
epigram
Paradise Lost by John Milton,
1667
Satan rebels
against God, is
thrown out of
heaven with his
army, and tempts
Eve to eat the
forbidden fruit,
which gets them
thrown out of
Eden, hence
Paradise Lost.
Book 10: 743-5
Did I request thee, Maker, from
my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit
thee
From darkness to promote me?
Romantic Comments by William Blake on Milton’s Satan:
“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and
governs the unwilling. And being restrained, it by degrees
becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire. The history of
this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is
called Messiah. And the original Archangel, or possessor of the
command of the heavenly host, is called the Devil or Satan, and
his children are called Sin & Death.
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and
God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a
true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”
[From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ca. 1790–93]
Myth of
Prometheus
Prometheus, a wise Titan, fought
with Zeus against other Titans. He
created man to walk upright and
gave him fire. He tricked Zeus to
take offering of bones and fat,
leaving meaty part for man. Zeus
stole man’s fire in anger, which
Prometheus returned. Zeus created
Pandora to punish man, and
chained Prometheus to a rock in
Caucasus Mountains and had an
eagle tear at his liver day and night.
Freed by Heracles and sacrifice of
Centaur.
Scott Eaton
Prometheus = “Forethought”
The Legacy of
Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
The Curse of Frankenstein
Blackenstein
Ghost of Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein
Frankenstein Unbound
Adaptations
•More differences than similarities
•1920 Rise in Eugenics – Nature vs.
Nurture – Frankenstein’s monster is
given brain of a criminal.
•Monster communicates with
guttural grunts and moans.
Topics in Novel
Dangerous Knowledge
Impact of Nature
Ambition
Isolation
Loss of Innocence
Responsibility
S
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Longinus: "On the Sublime"
Edmund Burke: "A Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
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