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In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing

Online ISBN:
9780191671432
Print ISBN:
9780198122494
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing

Chris Baldick
Chris Baldick

Professor of English

University of London at Goldsmiths' College
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Published online:
3 October 2011
Published in print:
21 June 1990
Online ISBN:
9780191671432
Print ISBN:
9780198122494
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book surveys the early history of one of our most important modern myths: the story of Frankenstein and the monster he created from dismembered corpses, as it appeared in fictional and other writings before its translation to the cinema screen. It examines the range of meanings that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers in the light of the political images of ‘monstrosity’ generated by the French Revolution. Later chapters trace the myth's analogues and protean transformations in subsequent writings, from the tales of Hoffmann and Hawthorne to the novels of Dickens, Melville, Conrad, and Lawrence, taking in the historical and political writings of Carlyle and Marx as well as the science fiction of Stevenson and Wells. The book shows that while the myth did come to be applied metaphorically to technological development, its most powerful associations have centred on relationships between people, in the family, in work, and in politics.

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