Transcript Diapositiva 1

Reading and Writing Skills for
Students of Literature in English:
Romanticism
Enric Monforte
Jacqueline Hurtley
Bill Phillips
Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
http://rogervivier.wordpress.com
The Gothic Novel
Origins in late 18thc
England: Ann Radcliffe The Romance of the Forest
(1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The
Italian (1797).
http://jimandellen.org
http://www.nndb.com
Ann Radcliffe 1764-1823
from The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
The Castle
Another gate delivered them into the second court, grassgrown and more wild than the first, where, as she surveyed
through the twilight its desolation – its lofty walls, overtopt with
briony, moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers that
rose above, - long-suffering and murder came to her
thoughts. One of those instantaneous and unaccountable
convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds,
impressed her with its horror. The sentiment was not
diminished, when she entered an extensive gothic hall,
obscured by the gloom of evening, which a light, glimmering at
a distance through a long perspective of arches, only
rendered more striking. As a servant brought the lamp nearer,
partial gleams fell upon the pillars and the pointed arches,
forming a strong contrast with their shadows, that stretched
along the pavement and walls.
1815 Gothic revival after Napoleonic Wars ended
Increased interest in Germany (Britain’s allies at
Waterloo)
http://dalihouse.blogsome.com
The Field of Waterloo (1817) J.M.W. Turner
Rising public interest in romantic literature.
Byron’s long poem The Corsair sold 10,000 copies
on the first day of publication in 1814.
Thousands of people turned out for his funeral in
London in 1826.
http://all-my-fucking-hate.blogspot.com
http://philipkennicott.com
http://www.brattlebookshop.com
Ingredients of the Gothic
Reaction to 18thc.
rationalism
mystery, fear
Interest in the
Gothic/medieval:
architecture,
ruined castles and
abbeys, dark
passages, huge
doors, dungeons,
barred windows,
attics.
http://www.marsdenarchive.com
Nature running wild: (ivy, weeds), forests,
mountains, thunderstorms...
animals: black birds, owls, bats...
http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/fltenv7.htm
http://bellyacresdesigns.com/stuffwedid/
Byronic heroes
Heathcliff
Rochester
George
Gordon,
Lord Byron,
1813
Richard
Westfall
http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com
The supernatural, esp. the boundaries between life
and death and challenges to rational explanation.
Deformed creatures. Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1841) Victor Hugo and the Romantic novel
http://www.doctormacro1.info/Movie%20Summaries/H/Hunchback%20of%20Notre%
20Dame,%20The%20(1923).htm
Evening/night time
http://www.smithhousehold.co.uk/Pendeford/gallery.html
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) Frankenstein (1818)
Daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and
radical philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836)
http://www.umich.edu
http://ocw.uib.es
Wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
1811 Shelley marries Harriet
Westbrook
http://blogs.20minutos.es
1814 Shelley elopes with Mary
Godwin. They travel to France and
Switzerland
1816 Shelley and Mary live near
Byron in Switzerland. Harriet
commits suicide, Shelley marries
Mary
1818 They join Byron in Italy
1822 Shelley drowns
http://fcom.us.es/blogs/vazquezmedel
The Legendary Origins of the Novel
Mary spent the summer of 1816 in Geneva with her
stepsister, Claire Clairmont, Shelley, Lord Byron, and
John Polidori, Byron's physician. Lord Byron rented
the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The weather
that summer
was the worst
in living
memory...
http://www.ilgattonero.it/sito_gn_in_costr_000924.htm
The eruption of Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815
killed some 8o,ooo people on the islands of Sumbawa
and Lombok. It was the greatest eruption since 1500.
The dust blasted into the stratosphere reduced the
transparency of the atmosphere, filtered out the sun and
consequently lowered surface temperatures. The effect
lasted for three years, straining the growth-capacity of
life across the planet.
Tambora Volcano
1815
Beginning in 1816, crop failure led to food riots in nearly
every country in Europe. Only in 1819 were there good
harvests again. The index for the Swiss harvest that year
shot up to a maximal six. (Bate 96-97)
On the night of June 16th Mary and Percy could not
return home, due to an incredible storm, and spent the
night at the Villa Diodati with Byron and Polidori. The
group read aloud a collection of German ghost stories,
The Fantasmagoriana. Byron challenged the group to
write a ghost story.
Mary Shelley
1797 -1851
Lord Byron
1788-1824
http://blogs.20minutos.es
Percy Bysshe
Shelley 17921822
http://www.mtholyoke.edu
http://fcom.us.es/blogs/vazquezmedel
John Polidori
1795-1821 http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com
On June 22nd, when Mary went to bed, she had a
"waking" nightmare:
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling
beside the thing he had put together. I saw the
hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on
the working of some powerful engine, show signs
of life...His success would terrify the artist; he
would rush away...hope that...this thing...would
subside into dead matter...he opens his eyes;
behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside,
opening his curtains... (196)
She completed the novel in May 1817. Published
January 1, 1818.
Frankenstein or the
Modern Prometheus
http://www.finebooksmagazine.com
'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould thee man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?‘ Paradise Lost, X. 743-5
Who was Prometheus?
A Titan of early Greek
legend of whom two main
stories are told by Hesiod.
http://www.jegsworks.com/project/promproj.htm
(i) He created man out of
clay and taught him the arts,
then gave him fire, which
Zeus took away; but
Prometheus stole a spark in
the pith of a stem of fennel.
Zeus then sent Pandora to
punish mankind.
Vulcan Chaining
Prometheus, 1623:
Dirck van Baburen of
Utrecht
http://www.ibiblio.org
(ii) Prometheus himself was
punished by Zeus by being
chained to a rock on Mount
Caucasus with an eagle
continuously pecking at his
liver. This is the subject of
Aeschylus’ Prometheus
Bound; Prometheus is
punished for the theft of fire
He is the champion of man
against the new Olympian
authority.
As the introducer of
fire and inventor of
sacrifice he is seen
as the patron of
human civilization.
http://blog.guidetocinema.com/images/
Shelley develops this theme in his poetic drama
Prometheus Unbound [1819]; Prometheus’s
knowledge would bring freedom and a reign of
love instead of hate and oppression.
For Byron as for Shelley he stood for the fight for
freedom, while Goethe in his poem emphasized
his sympathy with suffering humanity. He also
inspired Beethoven’s music for the ballet The
Creatures of Prometheus...
from Radice, Betty Who’s Who in the Ancient World.
London: Penguin, 1971. pp. 205-6
The Novel
http://classiclit.about.com/od/frankenstei1/tp/aatp_franken.htm
Where and when does the novel begin?
p.5
Volume 3, chapter 7, p.183
The frame story. Does Captain Walton have
anything in common with Victor Frankenstein?
http://www.dailygalaxy.com
Frankenstein as a Gothic novel
The laboratory: chapter 3, p.36
http://bleacherrepo
rt.com
Romantic ideas in the novel: the scenery
The Arctic: letter 4, p.12
http://www.janneyfamily.com/let-it-snow-let-it-snow-let-it-snow/
The Alps: volume 2, chapter 2, p.74
http://www.tripadvisor.es
The Lake District, volume 3, chapter 2, p.134
http://www.asap.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/lake-district.jpg
Romantic ideas in the novel: ideology
Safie’s Romantic love:
volume 3, chapter 6, p.102
The Romantic cyclopaedia
universalis volume 3, chapter 7,
p.103
http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/britlit/milton/miltonlater.html
http://www.freedomlab.org
Romantic ideas in the novel: political ideology
volume 1, chapter 3, pp.37-38
http://www.dailyventure.com
http://wallpapersdiq.net/es_63__Parthenon_Temple,_Ath
ens,_Greece.html
http://vivirmexico.com/tag/historia
http://www.granadablogs.com
“The Republican institutions of our country...”
volume 1, chapter 5, p.46
By Rev.
Thomas
Bankes,
1790
http://commons.wikimedia.org
“Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be
unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when
unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of
brotherly love and charity...” volume 2, chapter 7,
p.109
Du Contrat Social
ou Principes
du Droit Politique (1762)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712-1778
http://www.ebooks.adelaide.edu.au
Chacun de nous met en commun sa personne et toute
sa puissance sous la suprême direction de la volonté
générale; et nous recevons en corps chaque membre
comme partie indivisible du tout.
Each of us puts his person and all his power in
common under the supreme direction of the general
will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each
member as an indivisible part of the whole.
Du Contrat Social
ou Principes
du Droit Politique (1762)
Chapitre VI: Du pacte social
“..the standard of parliament and liberty” volume 3,
chapter 2, p.133
“...so much does suffering blunt even the
coarsest sensations of men.” volume 3, chapter
2, p.136
Orkney
croft
house
http://keithtilley.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
“You were thrown, by some surprizing accident, on
this shore, renowned for its hospitality...” volume 3,
chapter 4, p.151
http://www.livesoccertv.com
http://www.fotoartglamour.com/picture-seashore.html
Interpretations:
Frankenstein as a warning against scientific
progress; of humans playing God
Appendix A, p.196
Volume 1, chapter 3, p.35
“...how dangerous is the acquirement of
knowledge, and how much happier that man is
who believes his home town to be the world...”
“Hateful day when I received life!”
Volume 2, chapter 7, p.105
http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/frankens
tein-novel.htm
Illustration from
Frankenstein
http://lacrestadecicirro.blogspot.com/
Blake and Los
Volume 3, chapter 6, pp.167-8
Blake Death on a
Pale Horse
http://www.celtic-twilight.com/camelot/
Volume 2, chapter 1, p.71
JMW
Turner
Death on
a Pale
Horse
http://www.bbc.co.uk
Arguments in favour of Frankenstein as
an anti-enlightenment moral tale:
1. Frankenstein leads an ideal life of family
togetherness until he goes to the university at
Ingolstadt where he meets separate divided
scientists and experiences solitude. Volume 1,
chapter 1, p.23
2. The monster is a product. Science, progress,
technology have gone out of the makers’ control
3. Shelley was horrified by industrialisation which
she associated with rationalism, and the creation
of the proletariat.
The Industrial Proletariat
The monster may be identified with the emerging
proletariat.
The proletariat is the enemy of capitalism and will
ultimately destroy it.
No industrial workers appear in the novel because they
are all subsumed within the monster himself.
The novel takes place mainly in rural paradises to
demonstrate the monstrosity of the monster/proletariat.
The novel (and therefore Shelley) sympathise with the
monster/proletariat which is a corrupted and displaced
noble savage.
Arguments against Frankenstein being an
anti-enlightenment moral tale:
The industrial proletariat does not really emerge
until the 1830s
Why is Victor Frankenstein’s described as a
“Modern Prometheus”?
How concerned was Mary Shelley about scientific
progress?
Interpretations:
The French
Revolution
http://www.freewebs.com
Is Frankenstein’s creation the French Revolution,
which became a monster?
“No one can conceive the variety of feelings
which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the
first enthusiasm of success. Life and death
appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first
break through, and pour a torrent of light into our
dark world.” volume 1, chapter 3, p.36
How did the Revolution become a monster?