Download or read book Nature and Civilisation in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein written by Nadine Wolf and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-09-26 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Bayreuth, course: Proseminar, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Civilization has developed itself from nature, but it has also changed nature in the process. Apart from theories of much cited social analysts like Rousseau or John Locke, one equally well known example is that of man as the hunter: in his natural state, man only hunted to find food, to ensure the survival of himself and his family. In our society, humans do not have to hunt their food by themselves anymore, but we still don't seem to have lost our natural instincts, our natural aggressions. One logical consequence is that we direct our aggressions towards each other, that we decimate our own species; the problem is, however, that natural reasons like ensuring the best breed possible don't exist anymore, that we don't have explanations why we kill each other apparently at random. Tim Marshall writes about a crime known as 'The Edinburgh scandal', which took place in the years of 1828 and 1829. Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomist from Edinburgh and very engaged in the newly upcoming art of dissection, employed two criminals to bring him fresh corpses for his dissections. At this time, grave robbing in order to obtain corpses was an usual occurrence in British graveyards, but in this case the acquired 'objects' didn't come from those who had died naturally, but from people who had been murdered only for the sake of dissection. The reason for these murders was science, and with it civilization, therefore human nature was misused for the sake of science which in turn needed the bodies to explore the secrets nature still withheld from science. The resemblance to Mary Shelley's novel is apparent. But in Frankenstein, nature and civilization are also set in opposition to each other by the attributes they are given: nature as feminine, civilization as masculine. S

Download or read book Mars Shelley s Frankenstein A Representation of the Dichotomy of Nature Versus Civilization written by Janine Lacombe and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Koblenz-Landau (Anglistik), course: Interpreting Literature, language: English, abstract: Civilization is hideously fragile [...] there's not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish. (C.P Snow qtd. in Bhimeswara 178). What does it mean to be human and what does it mean to become civilized? Questions of origin and purpose constitute strong themes in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. In the following chapters the seeming interdependence between civilization, its scientific pursuits and nature will be examined and illustrated by appropriate examples. Before exploring how the dichotomy of nature versus civilization is represented in the story and which motifs and themes are incorporated in order to create such contrast, two philosophical approaches thought to have inspired the author will be introduced and put into context. After a theoretical frame is established, 'nature' and 'civilization' as major themes of the novel will be analyzed and compared. It is hoped to illustrate how each theme is represented and what effect it has on the overall reception and interpretation. 2. Nature versus Civilization - Philosophical Approaches and Theories Mary Shelley's scientific gothic novel can be interpreted as a representation of a Victorian woman's reaction to experiments in natural science and galvanic electricity. To what extend her sophisticated and critical reflection on contemporary societal issues draws from theories of much cited social analysts like Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke will be explored in the following chapters.

Download or read book English Literature in Context written by Paul Poplawski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 757 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Anglo-Saxon runes to postcolonial rap, this undergraduate textbook covers the social and historical contexts of the whole of the English literature.

Download or read book The Last Man Annotated written by Mary W Shelley and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-17 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Man is an apocalyptic science fiction novel. The book tells of a future world (the first-person narrative is that of a man living at the end of the 21st century) that has been ravaged by a plague. The novel was harshly reviewed at the time, and was virtually unknown until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s.

Download or read book Playing God written by Ted Peters and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the original publication of Playing God? in 1996, three developments in genetic technology have moved to the center of the public conversation about the ethics of human bioengineering. Cloning, the completion of the human genome project, and, most recently, the controversy over stem cell research have all sparked lively debates among religious thinkers and the makers of public policy. In this updated edition, Ted Peters illuminates the key issues in these debates and continues to make deft connections between our questions about God and our efforts to manage technological innovations with wisdom.

Download or read book Adapting Frankenstein written by Dennis R. Cutchins and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores the afterlife of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in theatre and film, radio, literature and graphics novels, making a substantial contribution to the field of adaptation studies.

Download or read book The Endurance of Frankenstein written by George Levine and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1982-05-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MARY SHELLEY's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus grew out of a parlor game and a nightmare vision. The story of the book's origin is a famous one, first told in the introduction Mary Shelley wrote for the 1831 edition of the novel. The two Shelleys, Byron, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori (Byron's physician) spent a "wet, ungenial summer in the Swiss Alps." Byron suggested that "each write a ghost story." If one is to trust Mary Shelley's account (and James Rieger has shown the untrustworthiness of its chronology and particulars), only she and "poor Polidori" took the contest seriously. The two "illustrious poets," according to her, "annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task." Polidori, too, is made to seem careless, unable to handle his story of a "skull-headed lady." Though Mary Shelley is just as deprecating when she speaks of her own "tiresome unlucky ghost story," she also suggests that its sources went deeper. Her truant muse became active as soon as she fastened on the "idea" of "making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream": "'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others."' The twelve essays in this collection attest to the endurance of Mary Shelley's "waking dream." Appropriately, though less romantically, this book also grew out of a playful conversation at a party. When several of the contributors to this book discovered that they were all closet aficionados of Mary Shelley's novel, they decided that a book might be written in which each contributor-contestant might try to account for the persistent hold that Frankenstein continues to exercise on the popular imagination. Within a few months, two films--Warhol's Frankenstein and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein--and the Hall-Landau and Isherwood-Bachardy television versions of the novel appeared to remind us of our blunted purpose. These manifestations were an auspicious sign and resulted in the book Endurance of Frankenstein.

Download or read book Stasiland written by Anna Funder and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight and in which one in fifty East Germans were informing on their fellow citizens, there are thousands of captivating stories. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started World War III; she visits the man who painted the line that became the Berlin Wall; and she gets drunk with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to “no longer exist.” Each enthralling story depicts what it’s like to live in Berlin as the city knits itself back together—or fails to. This is a history full of emotion, attitude and complexity.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein written by Andrew Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen original essays by leading scholars on Mary Shelley's novel provide an introduction to Frankenstein and its various critical contexts.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley written by Esther Schor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-20 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known from her day to ours as 'the Author of Frankenstein', Mary Shelley indeed created one of the central myths of modernity. But she went on to survive all manner of upheaval - personal, political, and professional - and to produce an oeuvre of bracing intelligence and wide cultural sweep. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley helps readers to assess for themselves her remarkable body of work. In clear, accessible essays, a distinguished group of scholars place Shelley's works in several historical and aesthetic contexts: literary history, the legacies of her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and of course the life and afterlife, in cinema, robotics and hypertext, of Frankenstein. Other topics covered include Mary Shelley as a biographer and cultural critic, as the first editor of Percy Shelley's works, and as travel writer. This invaluable volume is complemented by a chronology, a guide to further reading and a select filmography.

Download or read book Mars Shelley s Frankenstein A Representation of the Dichotomy of Nature versus Civilization written by Janine Lacombe and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Koblenz-Landau (Anglistik), course: Interpreting Literature, language: English, abstract: Civilization is hideously fragile [...] there’s not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish. (C.P Snow qtd. in Bhimeswara 178). What does it mean to be human and what does it mean to become civilized? Questions of origin and purpose constitute strong themes in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. In the following chapters the seeming interdependence between civilization, its scientific pursuits and nature will be examined and illustrated by appropriate examples. Before exploring how the dichotomy of nature versus civilization is represented in the story and which motifs and themes are incorporated in order to create such contrast, two philosophical approaches thought to have inspired the author will be introduced and put into context. After a theoretical frame is established, ‘nature’ and ‘civilization’ as major themes of the novel will be analyzed and compared. It is hoped to illustrate how each theme is represented and what effect it has on the overall reception and interpretation. 2. Nature versus Civilization – Philosophical Approaches and Theories Mary Shelley’s scientific gothic novel can be interpreted as a representation of a Victorian woman’s reaction to experiments in natural science and galvanic electricity. To what extend her sophisticated and critical reflection on contemporary societal issues draws from theories of much cited social analysts like Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke will be explored in the following chapters.

Download or read book Character Analysis Androgyny in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein written by Cristina Flores and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Paderborn, language: English, abstract: Families in the 19th century mostly lived in a patriarchal society. Growing up during this time, Mary Shelley used this society “ruled or controlled by men” as the basis for the population of her novel Frankenstein. On the first sight, the characters appear to fulfill their gender roles perfectly. Women occupy the domestic sphere, men work outside home. In addition, women are only of marginal importance whereas men appear as the strong protagonists who are able to influence the storyline. Even if this first overview is correct, Mary Shelley does not maintain this severe separation of sexes and their characteristics but proves that both women and men own some features of the other sex. Therefore, one could state that the women in Frankenstein have an important role as well, as, at second sight, they share a lot of similarities with men and vice versa which contributes to analyze the topic of androgyny. In my term paper I will therefore concentrate on this androgyny of men and women in Frankenstein. Being androgynous, which can be defined as the state of “having both male and female characteristics” , is an essential element of the novel. Analyzing the male characters one discovers that the male characteristics are important but that it is especially the femaleness which leads to the course of the novel and not typically male behavior. With regard to women, the androgyny shows the beginning of emancipation and hence, women as contemporary heroines, able to escape from a male-dominated society. Furthermore, it is important to analyze the monster that shows androgynous traits so that it cannot be classified as either male or female. These features show that the monster possesses general human qualities as it shares a lot of similarities with the characters of the novel.

Download or read book A Life with Mary Shelley written by Barbara Johnson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1980, deconstructive and psychoanalytic literary theorist Barbara Johnson wrote an essay on Mary Shelley for a colloquium on the writings of Jacques Derrida. The essay marked the beginning of Johnson's lifelong interest in Shelley as well as her first foray into the field of "women's studies," one of whose commitments was the rediscovery and analysis of works by women writers previously excluded from the academic canon. Indeed, the last book Johnson completed before her death was Mary Shelley and Her Circle, published here for the first time. Shelley was thus the subject for Johnson's beginning in feminist criticism and also for her end. It is surprising to recall that when Johnson wrote her essay, only two of Shelley's novels were in print, critics and scholars having mostly dismissed her writing as inferior and her career as a side effect of her famous husband's. Inspired by groundbreaking feminist scholarship of the seventies, Johnson came to pen yet more essays on Shelley over the course of a brilliant but tragically foreshortened career. So much of what we know and think about Mary Shelley today is due to her and a handful of scholars working just decades ago. In this volume, Judith Butler and Shoshana Felman have united all of Johnson's published and unpublished work on Shelley alongside their own new, insightful pieces of criticism and those of two other peers and fellow pioneers in feminist theory, Mary Wilson Carpenter and Cathy Caruth. The book thus evolves as a conversation amongst key scholars of shared intellectual inclinations while closing the circle on Johnson's life and her own fascination with the life and circle of another woman writer, who, of course, also happened to be the daughter of a founder of modern feminism.

Download or read book Frankenstein written by Shelley and published by . This book was released on 2023-01-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frankenstein is a novel by Mary Shelley. It was first published in 1818. Ever since its publication, the story of Frankenstein has remained brightly in the imagination of the readers and literary circles across the countries. In the novel, an English explorer in the Arctic, who assists Victor Frankenstein on the final leg of his chase, tells the story. As a talented young medical student, Frankenstein strikes upon the secret of endowing life to the dead. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he might make a man. The Outcome is a miserable and an outcast who seeks murderous revenge for his condition. Frankenstein pursues him when the creature flees. It is at this juncture t that Frankenstein meets the explorer and recounts his story, dying soon after. Although it has been adapted into films numerous times, they failed to effectively convey the stark horror and philosophical vision of the novel. Shelley's novel is a combination of Gothic horror story and science fiction.

Download or read book Gothic Fiction Gothic Form written by George E. Haggerty and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a new perspective on Gothic fiction and reassesses its place in literary history. After defining his concept of "affective form" and summarizing the problematic assumptions behind recent critical approaches to the Gothic, George Haggerty introduces a startling theoretical discussion of the Gothic Tale, and he explains in what ways the tale, as a form with identifiable affective properties, is ideally suited to Gothic concerns. Having established a direct relation between this study and recent discussions of narratology and generic identity, Haggerty develops his argument as it applies to major Gothic works in both England and America, including works by Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, Shelley, Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, and James. He examines the Gothic Tale as a form that resolves the inconsistency and incoherence of many Gothic novels and offers even the best of them a center of focus and a way of achieving their fullest affective power. In this study, the Gothic Tale emerges as a means of heightening the emotional intelligibility of Gothic fiction and answering Walpole's confused desire to unite "two kinds of romance" in the Gothic. It is a form that can answer the ontological and epistemological, as well as the structural, challenge of the Gothic writers. From its first hints within the Gothic novel as an alternative literary mode offering the Gothicists various expressive advantages to its eerie success in a work such as James's "The Jolly Corner," the Gothic Tale offers insight into generic distinction and literary expression. This is a major statement about an important literary form.

Download or read book Dangerous Bodies written by MARIE. MULVEY-ROBERTS and published by . This book was released on 2018-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an investigation of the body and its oppression by the church, the medical profession and the state, Dangerous bodies reveals the actual horrors lying beneath fictional horror in settings as diverse as the monastic community, slave plantation, operating theatre, Jewish ghetto and battlefield trench. It provides original readings of canonical Gothic literary and film texts including The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, Frankenstein, Dracula and Nosferatu. This collection of dangerous bodies is traced back to the effects of the English Reformation, Spanish Inquisition, French Revolution, Caribbean slavery, Victorian medical malpractice, European anti-Semitism and finally warfare. The endangered or dangerous body lies at the centre of the clash between victim and persecutor and has generated tales of terror and narratives of horror, which function to either salve, purge or dangerously perpetuate such oppositions.

Download or read book Unhallowed Arts written by Laetitia Wilson and published by University of Western Australia Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, October 19-December 23, 2018.