Lecture summary

1. Frankenstein and the Gothic Tradition: The novel and authorship

   • Circumstances of the novel's genesis

   • Shelley's revised preface of 1831

   • Authorship and adaptations

   • Authorial intervention (structure)

2. Theories of authorship

• New Critics: Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" (1954)

• Michel Foucault , "What is an Author?"

• Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

3. Synthesis

 

Secondary reading

Hume, Robert D. "Gothic vs Romantic: A re-evaluation of the Gothic novel", PMLA, 84 (1969), 282-90.

Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and NY: Methuen, 1981).

Kieley, Robert. The Romantic Novel in England (Cambridge : Harvard UP, 1972)

Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterly (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1981)

Platzner, Robert, L. "Gothic vs Romantic: A rejoinder", PMLA, 86 (1971), 262-74.

Schug, Charles. "The Romantic Form of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein", Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 17 (1977), 607-19.

 

Useful webages

 

The University of Warwick's Library subscribes to JSTOR which is a database of Scholarly Journals that can be accessed by all students at the university provided they are logged on to insite. If you do a search for Frankenstein on JSTOR you'll find a vast number of articles which are published in refereed journals. Below is the first page of results:

• Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe, Paul Sherwin PMLA, Vol. 96, No. 5 (Oct., 1981), pp. 883-903
• Fatal Attraction, or the Post-Modern Prometheus, Kate Ellis The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 27, No. 1, Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality. Part 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 111-121
• 'Frankenstein!!', David Murray Tempo, New Series, No. 127 (Dec., 1978), p. 46
• The Living Theatre in Exile: "Mysteries, Frankenstein", Saul Gottlieb The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Summer, 1966), pp. 137-152  
• John Frankenstein's "Portrait of Godfrey Frankenstein" and the Aesthetics of Friedrich Schiller, Elisabeth L. Roark American Art, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 74-83.
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity, Bette London PMLA, Vol. 108, No. 2 (Mar., 1993), pp. 253-267
• Frankenstein's Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain, H. L. Malchow Past and Present, No. 139 (May, 1993), pp. 90-130
• Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein, Denise Gigante ELH, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 565-587
• Custody Battles: Reproducing Knowledge about "Frankenstein", Ellen Cronan Rose New Literary History, Vol. 26, No. 4, Special Issue: Philosophical Resonances (Autumn, 1995), pp. 809-832
• Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in "Bride of Frankenstein", Elizabeth Young Feminist Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 403-437
• The Political Geography of Horror in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", Fred V. Randel ELH, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 465-491
• Literate Species: Populations, "Humanities," and Frankenstein, Maureen Noelle McLane ELH, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 959-988

 

 

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Visual Frank

 

Boris Karloff as the monster 

 

 

 

 

Frontspiece of 1831 edition

 

 

The Irish Frank.

 

De Niro as the monster