A FRANKENSTEIN BIBLIOGRAPHY
An annotated bibliography is a list of all sources used in a document, followed by a brief description of the content, its quality, and its usefulness in the research. Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley in the 18th century. She was prompted to write this novel based on a nightmare she had after losing her daughter. The novel is generally a ghost story. Since its publication, there have been more than 300 volumes of fiction, at least 90 films, and hundreds of comic and academic journals inspired by it. Below is a summary of seven sources inspired by the novel that interpret the story in different ways.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. The Annotated Frankenstein. Harvard University Press, 2012. This book seeks to bring the novel’s context to our times. Mary Shelley, in the first edition of her book, Frankenstein, captured her audience’s imagination very well. She was only 17 years old when she lost her premature baby girl. The dreams of her deceased baby haunted her for many months, and in a nightmare, Shelley saw her baby resurrect after being rubbed fiercely by fire. In Frankenstein, she changes the vigorous rubbing to the move of an electric current through the body. She transformed cutting-edge science into a definitive account of the connection between science and power. In Frankenstein 200, our time’s advanced science is a union of electricity, digital technology, and genetics. Although much has transformed, the hope of using science to acquire some immortality is still alive in many people. Mary Shelley warned us about the risks of extending science into realms, where there is minute control of the results. After succeeding, Victor Frankenstein had hoped that his invention would die if left alone. A desire that was not apprehended in the novel and led to disastrous consequences. Scientific research is unappealable. Once a new proposal is out, it will be pursued somewhere by someone.
Butler, Marilyn, and Mary Shelley. “Introduction. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text.” (1994). Marilyn’s opening reviews the rational context and psychological strains of Shelley’s life that appeared to have guided her book. Butler suggests that the discipline of the novel revolves around the disagreement between biologists. It is argued that Mary Shelley’s revisions to the story reveal her need to restrain the mechanistic view, which fell into discredit in the 1820s.
Hindle, Maurice. “Vital matters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and romantic science.” Critical Survey, (1990): 29-35. Maurice argues that in the early 19th century, science had a significant influence on the genesis and substance of Frankenstein. If asked to summarize the Frankenstein story, many would not use the word scientist to describe the monster’s creator. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein is defined as an artist. When Shelley’s book was first published, the word scientist had not even been thought up in 1818. This was a problem in the 18th century, which arose because the men of science regarded themselves as philosophers and scientific workers. Maurice mentions that these men were concerned with maintaining their ranks as thoughtful interpreters of a world which they nevertheless studied primarily in its material features. He argues that if that kind of commitment was still healthy in 1834, it was even more evident in the first two decades of the century when Mary Shelley grew up.
Brennan, Matthew C. “The Landscape of Grief in Mary Shelley’s” Frankenstein.” Studies in the Humanities 15.1 (1988): 33. Matthew suggests that Frankenstein is the outcome of Mary Shelley’s unsolved pain for her mother’s demise, which is reflected by Frankenstein’s vocation of arrogance in temperament, contrary to Clerval’s and his liking for the scenic before the untimely passing of his mother. Shelley and Frankenstein both, in their scientific conquest, desired to revive the dead. Frankenstein’s withdrawal to the complete scenery of the Alps provided a figurative restoration with the lost mother. Contrary to that, the emergence of the monsters evokes his grief. On the other hand, Shelley overcomes her pain by drafting the novel.
Youngquist, Paul. “Frankenstein: The Mother, the Daughter, and the Monster.” Philological Quarterly 700.30 (1991): 339. While Wollstonecraft focused on setting women free by outdoing sexual identity, Shelley and Frankenstein examine the inevitable bodily imperatives of being female. The monster’s physique decides his end, which cannot be prevented by using reasoning or speech. His emergence brings an archaic fright of the impaired, which can be linked to the contamination of the female monarchy of procreation and giving birth. Frankenstein symbolizes this both by his workroom and his necrophiliac vision after the monster’s animation. The females in the novel, aside from Mary Shelley’s deceased mother, remain virgins outside the materiality realm till they are eliminated by the monster as though he was seeking revenge for his degradation. Paul suggests that the mother’s demise and the absence of mothers in the novel are hypothesized as Shelley’s subduing of the disastrous potentiality of mothering.
Randel, Fred V. “Frankenstein,” Feminism, and the Intertextuality of Mountains.” Studies in Romanticism (1984): 515-532. Among Fred’s literary studies was his revision of the cultural meaning of mountains. Mary Shelley introduces a mountaintop encounter that holds a likelihood of allowing Frankenstein to grow up. In his book, Fred points out that while Mary Shelley’s mountain scenes supply both regressive and nurturing opportunities, Frankenstein’s lab figures the birthing procedure as disgusting because the woman’s presence is subdued. The mountain mother, by distinction, is the product of a matriarchal society. It extols a female fertility goddess and uses men as subordinate gods. According to Fred, this female mountain goddess preceded Zeus.
Frankenstein, Endurance Of. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. Univ of California Press, 1979. Mary Shelly’s turn to the grotesque heritage is rooted in her symbolic operation of a tale of birth, or precisely the afterbirth trauma that demands regret and sadness. In the novel, this comes partly from Shelley’s own early encounter of childbirth as well as the suicides of her half-sister and Harriet, Percy’s wife. Ellen argues that these experiences mixed both birth and death during the composing of Frankenstein. The infant is, therefore, a monster and a piteous sufferer. Frankenstein’s unrealistic belief is very different from the material ugliness of his creation.
From the above sources, we see that Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein had undergone losses, and both dealt with grief in their way. Their response to their loss brings out the storyline in a way that readers can engage with Mary Shelley’s feelings. Being a science fiction novel, the audience is required to use their imagination. The writers from the above sources discuss the book and the different themes passed across by the author. Each one of them breaks the novel down individually according to their understanding and brings out the picture so well.
Work Cited
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. The Annotated Frankenstein. Harvard University Press, 2012.
Butler, Marilyn, and Mary Shelley. “Introduction. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text.” (1994).
Hindle, Maurice. “Vital matters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and romantic science.” Critical Survey, (1990): 29-35.
Brennan, Matthew C. “The Landscape of Grief in Mary Shelley’s” Frankenstein.”” Studies in the Humanities 15.1 (1988): 33.
Youngquist, Paul. “Frankenstein: The Mother, the Daughter, and the Monster.” Philological Quarterly 700.30 (1991): 339.
Randel, Fred V. “” Frankenstein”, Feminism, and the Intertextuality of Mountains.” Studies in Romanticism (1984): 515-532.
Frankenstein, Endurance Of. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel.