ENGL 393 MC exam

Good Hunting

• Author: Ken Liu

• Shows how traditions of the past can reassert themselves in modern technology

• Certain structures within evolution are transmitted into the future with small altercations; updated and adapted

Steam Punk - Good Hunting

• utilizing their technology in a way to express what they believed the the future of technology would look like

Cyber punk - Good Hunting

• Revolutions against the clean utopia idea that people have about the future in golden age magazines

• They were observing the urban decay around them and began to understand that the future would not be utopian

Silk punk - Good Hunting

• evolution of cyber punk that draws upon philosophical basis in eastern philosophy

Eroticism in Good Hunting

• Within the text there are many erotic energies, such as transformation and reforming; however these energies are not heterosexual reproduction; rather different energies, such as technological and chi energies that work to rebuild the body

Senses in Good Hunting

• Sensation of heat → tied to thermodynamic forms of power

• Scent → connected to memory allows us to resurrect the past and is apart of our identity

Frankenstein Frontispiece in 1831 edition

• Victor is shown as a creator of the romantic and enlightenment

• Shows that education inform or deform us

• In the image Victor reminds us of Adam and Eve — shows who is innocent and who is evil

Mary Shelley childhood

• Born in London in 1787

• Mother was Mary Wollstonecraft and father was William Godwin

• Her mother died of childbirth complications after Mary was born

• Her father ensured Mary got a good education

• Her father remarried and adopted 2 illegitimate children of his second wife

• Mary did a lot of domestic work and helped in the raising of her siblings, including their education

How does Shelley’s childhood influence Frankenstein

• Her mothers death potentially influenced the way creation in the novel is always tied to death and how Victor creates something vile which causes him anguish

Mary Shelley adolescents and early adulthood

• at 16 she met the romantic poet Percy Byssche Shelley

• In 1814 they fled the continent and went to Europe

• In 1815 Mary has her first child, which died after only several days of being alive

• A year later Mary had a son named William

How does Shelley’s early adulthood influence Frankenstein

• Her husband Percy did many experiments in his early life and was interested in the sciences which may have potentially influenced the novel

• The quick death of her first baby may be intersected with the way life and death are intertwined within the novel and for Shelley

The trip to Geneva

• occurred in 1816

• It was a strange/exceptional year — it had no summer because of a volcanic eruption

• Mary, Percy, William, and Claire travelled to Geneva in the spring

• At Geneva they met up with Lord Byron and his physician Dr. John Polidori

• In the evenings the group would entertain themselves with conversations about recent events, the classics, politics, aesthetics, philosophy, scientific discoveries, and Galvanism

Galvanism

• In De Viribus Electriciatis, Luigi Galvani argues that animals have their own internal source of electricity

Galvanism in Frankenstein

• Victor: “the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump”

How did the trip to Geneva influence Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein

• The trip was a catalyst for Shelly in writing the novel

• The preface in the 1831 edition of Frankenstein talks about Galvanism: “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; Galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and edged with vital warmth”

• The ghost story writing contest was also an extremely influential factor

The ghost story writing contest

• During the trip to Geneva the group read ghost stories from the Fantasmagoriana

• Lord Byron suggested that each member of the group compose a ghost story; the author of the scariest tale wins the contest

Other influences on Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein

• Enlightenment political theory → belief that people should have say over their governance and life; also emphasized women’s education

• Works of predecessors like John Milton and Christopher Marlowe, as well as contemporary Romantic writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley

• The ideals of Romanticism

What is romanticism

• A movement across the arts that emerged in England at the end of the 18th century and persisted until 1832 (year of the first Reform Bill)

• This movement was actually occurring in Germany before it reached England

• Scholars consider its origin to be contemporaneous of the French Revolution, followed by the Reign of Terror with deaths of many individuals from the guillotine

• Some cite the publication of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge work as the inception of Romanticism; its preface serves as a manifesto, or statement of artistic aims

Features of Romanticism

• unlike Neoclassicism which emphasized tradition, Romanticism emphasized innovation and originality

• Use vernacular or common language

• Breaks the system of compositional rules, or decorum of Neoclassical works

• Subject matter is often private or personal, and focuses on interior world of the writer

• Visionary where objects and incidents of everyday life are given transcendent meaning

• Concerned with natured and its relationship to the mind

• Contradicts Enlightenments emphasis on reason and instead emphasizes the imagination

• Focuses on isolated individuals like outlaws, rebels, anti-heroes (Prometheus or Satanic figures)

• Neoclassical often stressed libations of humankind and warned against pride, whereas Romantics saw human capacity as infinite, and proposed that art should reach beyond human limits (e.g., Victor acting as God and creator; his abilities are infinite)

Frankenstein frontispiece 1818 edition

• “The Modern Prometheus” foregrounds the mythological, raising issues of genere

• Genre indicates a specific type or class of literature

• It was part of Neoclassical decorum to keep the genre distinct, or pure; today genre is fluid

Genre

• Classical scheme has 7 genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, novel, essay, and biography

Themes and intertextuality in 1818 frontispiece

• Quotation from John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost

• Introduces multiple themes, or concepts with which a literary work repeatedly engages and developes

• Highlights how the novel is an intertextual work → made up of other texts, via its explicit and implicit references to outside texts → transforms and rewrites referenced texts → changes the way we look at the work

• It sets up created and the created (God and Adam, as well as the fallen-Satan)

1818 edition preface

• written by Percy Shelley, and posed questions regarding the authorship of Frankenstein

• Identifies Frankestein as a precursor to or an early work of science fiction

• Yet the novel could also be considered gothic; it is a genre hybrid of mixture

• Addresses the idea of novel reading as a vice; proposes the works capability to instill virtue in its readership

Frankestein Volume I

• Begins as letters — novels that narrate their events through the exchange of letters are referred to as epistolary

• Allows Shelley to stress major thematic concerns; the need for sentimental ties and domestic affections

• The epistolary mode de-centers Victor; it also allows Victor to stay connected with family through the writing of his own letters

The Sea of Ice

• Romantic pairing by Caspar David Friedrich

• On the side of the painting there is a shipwreck

• Relates to Walton who believes that he will sail up to the North Pole (thinking he is Columbus like figure), but the ship gets stuck in ice; this also parallels/sets up how Victor believes he can create a creature and all will be well

Walton - Letter 1 Frankenstein

• “I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the religion of beauty and delight”

• Allusion to John Milton’s, Paradise Lost “the mind of its own place, and in itself / can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n

• Related to Romanticism and the dangers of imagination

Allusion

• A reference to another literary work, event, or person (fictional or historical), that does not explicitly identity its source

Foil

• A character in a work who emphasizes the character traits of the protagonist, the main character of the narrative

• Walton may act as a foil for Victor

Walton as a foil for Victor

• found in diction

• Walton describes Victor as having “the shape of a man, but apparently gigantic stature” — describes him as monstrous not human

• Walton: “now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many school boys of 15 . . . I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind”

Figurative language

• It departs from standard usage in order to create special meanings (e.g., simile, metaphor)

• It is just as important as diction; imagery is also important

Figurative language in Frankenstein

• The description of Elizabeth in 1818 edition: “gay and playful as a summer insect . . . [a]s lively as a bird’s /. . . The most fragile creature in the world.”

• The description of Elizabeth in 1831 edition: “Elizabeth to me was a promise gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine — mine to protect, love, and cherish . . . She was to be mine only”

  • Shows Victor’s possessiveness

Imagery

• Define broadly, may encompass all figurative language; defined more strictly, it applies to the description of only visible objects and events

Victor’s education in Frankenstein

• “Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate . . . In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa … [if] my father had taken the pains to explain to me the principles of Agrippa … I certainly would have thrown Agrippa aside . . . The train of my ideas would never have relieved the fatal impulse that led to my ruin”

  • Victor feels like his education is useless

  • Puts a lot of blame on his father → what proceeds in the novel is because his father never told him the truth

• Victor fetishizes education throughout the novel and because of this he can’t see the value of Creature’s life because he views him as unintelligent

Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus in Frankenstein

• Victor: “I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructions”

  • Direct allusion to Doctor Faustus

• Victor: “I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosophers stone and the elixir of life”

Language of power and power of language in Frankenstein

• Victor: “metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles . . . They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe”

  • Initially there is deflation of alchemy then a reclaim for that power and science which has given human beings control over nature

  • Many of Victor’s ideas and the way they translate in the text with language are similar to the language used in chemistry at the time

Unconsciousness in Frankestein

• can work against the conscious mind

The principle of life in Frankenstein

• Victor: “whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?”

• This quotation from Victor relates to the Vitalist Debate which occurred between 1814-1819; questioned, what is the nature of life?

The Vitalist Debate

• It was a very public series of debates between 2 professors at London’s Royal College of Surgeons

• John Abermethy (vitalist) vs William Lawrence (materialism)

• vitalism believes that life requires an irreducible, non physical “life force” or sould, while materialism believes that life is purely physical, explainable by matter, motion, and chemical/biological views

• The Shelley’s family physician was Willian Lawrence

Debates about animal vivisection

• Animals once were dissected alive in surgical amphitheaters without anesthesia all over medical colleges

• In 1809, Thomas Erskine proposed a bill to the House of Lords that prohibited excessive and malicious cruelty to animals

• The bill did not pass until 1822

Animal Vivisection in Frankenstein

• Victor: “I collected bones from charnel houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame . . . I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter house furnished many of my materials”

  • The creation of the creature is violent

  • Sort of grave robbing in order to make the creature

Description of the Creature in Frankenstein

• Victor: “I saw the dull yellow eyes of the creature opened; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs . . . His limbs were in proportion . . . His hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his water eyes . . [and] his shrivelled black lips”

  • This passage foregrounds the philosophical questions of the relationship of parts to wholes → Organic Wholes and Forms, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement

  • Victor only sees parts of the Creature, he cannot see the whole

  • This passage deals with the question of aesthetics; the study of the principles of fine arts, and the nature of beauty (Blazon)

Henry Clerval’s role in Frankenstein

• Clerval “your father and cousin would be very happy if they revived a letter form you in your own handwriting. They hardly know how ill you have been and are uneasy at your long silence”

  • He has beneficial effects on Victor’s health

  • Clerval has lots of empathy, which Victor fundamentally lacks

  • Clerval also differs from Victor because he wants to study many things and is interested in many areas of human beings and human nature

  • Clerval has inter-subjectivity

The Sublime

• 18th century philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke define it as a kind of “delightful horror,” an aesthetic experience of terror that is nevertheless pleasurable

• Burkean sublime describes “a movement from terror or fear to astonishment . . . To admiration or perhaps reverence and respect” - Anne Mellor

• Sublime index this inability to look away (morbid curiosity)

• It tells us that we must respect and appreciate the environment

The Sublime in Frankenstein

• Victor: “The storm appeared to approach rapidly, and, on the landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased

• Victor: “[the] storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Jurassic, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire”

  • Nature is beautiful and harmonious but violent and terrible because it is so powerful

  • Nature has unknowable frightening, and awe inspiring

Qualities of sublime objects

• Vastness in dimension/quality

• Massively powerful

• Obscure → e.g., the storms within Frankenstein, and the ice fields near the end of the text

Burke on the Sublime

• “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger; that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotions which the mind is capable of feeling”

• Burke’s examples of sublime: gigantic architectural structures and ruins; natural phenomena like mountain ranges and waterfalls; natural disasters; Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost; the armies of Shakespeare 1 Henry IV; thunder; artillery explosions

Kant on the Sublime

• Kant subdivides Burke’s sublime into:

  • The mathematical sublime: denoting vastness of magnitude, in terms of size and numbers

  • The dynamic sublime: owing to objects of overwhelming terror that incite feelings of human helplessness

• Kant’s sublime is almost exclusively natural, and originates in the human subject as opposed to being a property of things in themselves

The Creatures education in Frankenstein

• The Creature: “a strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, I felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various sense . . . Darkness then come over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes . . . The light poured in upon me”

• The Creature: “the heat wearing me as I walked”

• The Creature: “I felt also cold”

• The Creature: “I began to distinguish my sensations from each other”

  • As opposed to Victor’s education, which is predicated on book-learning, the Creature learns by way of his senses

The Creatures education and John Locke in Frankenstein

• Creatures formation relations the Empiricism of John Locke

• In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he argues that knowledge comes from the sense — a posteriori as a opposed to priori

• Locke discusses the Tabula rasa which means a blank slate → individuals are born without built in mental content, where knowledges comes from experience, perception, and nurture rather than innate ideas

The Creature and the Natural Man in Frankenstein

• Critics have pointed out that the Creature resembles the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s Natural Man; a hypothetical, pre-societal human defined as inherently good, solitary, and compassionate, living in harmony with nature.He is uncorrupted because societal inequality, pride, and greed have no existed yet, these things only appear later through civilization

The Creature and virtue in Frankenstein

• The Creature: “the gentle manners of the girl entice my love”

• The Creature: “I longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures”

  • Impressed by the manners of the cottagers

• The Creature “I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations . . . [the] wonderful virtue of the early Romans . . . I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere”

  • Creature learns through the teachings provided to Safie

• The Creature: “I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind . . . I looked upon crime as a distant evil”

  • The Creature is aware of learning virtues from the DeLacey family, but also realizes virtues must be practiced

The Creature and Victor’s education as parallels in Frankenstein

• The creature learns from literary works such as Goethe’s, The Sorrows of Young Weather, Plutarch’s Lives, and Milton’s Paradise Lost

• His readings are parallel to Victor’s obsession with Agrippa

• These works inform the Creature’s character and determine who he is

Demanding a female in Frankenstein

• The Creature: “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create”

  • The Creature’s demand for a mate echoes Paradise Lost, suggesting how texts inform, and form us as subjects

  • This moment is important to the Creature’s characterization: he desires social, and sexual companionship

Unmaking the mate in Frankenstein

• Victor: “thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engage, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless and nervous

  • This passage leads readers to question how Victor’s dejected, nervous state might be influencing his ability to exercise reason, and therefore his decision to destroy the half-formed creature

• In Victor’s decision to destroys the Creatures mate it appears that another injustice has been committed against the creature

Frankenstein as a travelogue

• Victor: “during this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns”

• Victor: “we saw many ruined castles . . . In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices”

  • Victor and Henry’s travels through the continent are extremely detailed

Clerval abroad in Frankenstein

• Victor: “the delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of taken, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and recourses”

• Clerval: “I could pass my life here”

• Victor: “he found that a traveller’s life is one that inflicts much pain amidst its enjoyments”

  • Clerval’s romantic imagination is coupled with sentimentality

  • Cerlval is a balance individual, with various human faculties in proper proportions to one another → dialectical thinking that reconciles opposites

Grave robbing in the 19th century

• when Frankenstein was composed, cadavers were in high demand at medical colleges

• Medical students often funded their educations by seeking cadavers (body-snatching)

• In 1810, the Anatomical Society was formed, which included John Abernathy as one of the members

• In 1828, the infamous West Port, or Burke and Hare, murders took place; a series of 16 killings committed over 10 months in Edinburgh by William Burke and William Hare, they murdered the residents and visitors, selling their bodies to anatomist for dissection to meet the high demand for cadavers

• The Autonomy Act of 1832 allowed doctors and students to dissect donated bodies, and crucially, unclaimed bodies from workhouses and hospitals, aiming to end the illegal “body snatching” trade

Victors description of Orkney Islands in Frankenstein

• “it was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, who gaunt and scraggy limbs have tokens of their miserable fare”

  • His description raises questions of the relationship between geography, psychological state, and thoughts, actions, and behaviours

Clerval’s murder in Frankenstein

• Victor: “have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims away their destiny; but you, Clerval, my benefactor”

  • The destruction of the Creator’s companion is closely associated with Cerval’s murder; just as the Creature is denied companionship so is Victor; and this will happen again with Elizabeth

Victor’s wedding in Frankenstein

• Victor: “he had vowed to be with me on my wedding night, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if. To show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore, that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my father’s happiness . . . [I] should not retard it a single hour”

  • Even after what happened with Clerval, Victor cannot see what the creature intends to do

Victor’s pursuit of vengeance in Frankenstein

• It parallels the Creature’s devotion to tormenting Victor and Victor’s devotion to building the creature

• Victor: “O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the demon who caused misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict . . . I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth . . . And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to avoid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me”

  • Conceives of his pursuit as a holy quest, consecrated by the ghosts of his friends

Bildungsroman

• means a “novel of formation.” Abrams and Harpham write that the “subject of these novels is the development of the protagonists mind and character, in the passage from childhood through varied experiences - and often through spiritual crisis - into maturity”

Is Frankenstein a Bildungsroman?

• Victor’s speech at the end of the novel: “are you then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror . . . Your courage exhibited because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome . . . Now behold with the first imagination of dangerous . . . You shrink away and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril”

  • Appears that Victor has not learned anything, he has not grown, or understood his own mistakes; the verbiage he uses is reminiscent of his thoughts when creating the Creature

Victor and the Creature’s death in Frankenstein

• Walton: “he pressed my hands feebly, and his eyes closed forever”

  • Victors dies with a friend (maybe his only true friend besides Clerval)

• The Creature: “I shall ascend into my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames . . . My ashes will be sweet into the sea by the winds. My spirits will sleep in peace”

  • As opposed to Victor, the Creature has an isolate death

  • His death is reminiscent of a hero heath or antiquity death

The Creature’s realization that he is a monster

• “crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the rightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and majesty of goodness