FRANKENSTEIN

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

1

WELCOME TO AP LITERATURE & COMPOSITION!! I look forward to working with you in an intellectually engaging environment of deep reading and discussion and writer’s workshop. We will hone your research and writing skills, complete a writing portfolio, and prepare you for success in higher education. First semester assignments will support your college application process and second semester assignments will equip you with the research, writing, and editing skills needed for distinct scholarship in your schools of choice. REQUIRED READING & ASSIGNMENTS:

In preparation for our studies during the academic year 2018-2019, please complete the following assignments: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus. [SIGNET CLASSIC WITH AN AFTERWARD BY HAROLD BLOOM ISBN-13: 978-0451527714 ISBN-10: 0451527712]. ASSIGNMENT DUE DATES & POINT VALUES STEPS ONE & TWO OF STUDY GUIDE [20 points] 9/05/2018 (FIRST DAY) Sublime Selfie and Introduction [20 points] 9/06/2018 Annotated Text (SEE BOOKMARK) [100 points] 9/10/2018 Secondary Source Article & Annotations [25 points] 9/11/2018 TEST of Summer Reading [100 points] 9/14/2018 **I’ve provided the study guide we will use for class discussions during our opening unit.

EXTRA CREDIT (OPTIONAL) READING:

Read and annotate each page of ANY of the novels listed below. Locate an article of critical analysis for the novel from a scholarly database and annotate the article. Students will receive an additional grade of 100/100 on the marking period grade report or may replace an assignment for which he or she earned a score of less than 100 with the 100 points of credit earned through additional reading. If you read avidly during the summer months, you could complete all four extra credit optional assignments and “bank” the credit to use for each marking period.

Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847) Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (1897) Edith Wharton’s THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1920) Ernest Hemingway’s A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1929) Isaac Asimov’s I, ROBOT (1950) J.D. Salinger’s THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951) Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO (2005)

SUBLIME SELFIE & CAPTION:

INTRODUCTIONS: Snap and PRINT a selfie-style photo of yourself in a setting you find sublime. Caption the selfie with a literary title or a favorite piece of text (poem or prose)

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

2

BEFORE READING THE NOVEL, COMPLETE STEPS ONE & TWO. STEP ONE: VIEW THE TED TALK TITLED “Everything You Need to Know to Read Frankenstein” Everything you need to know to read "Frankenstein" - Iseult ... - TED-Ed ed.ted.com/.../everything-you-need-to-know-to-read-mary-shelley-s-frankenstein-iseu...

PROVIDE BULLETED NOTES BELOW (15)

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

3

STEP TWO: READ THE CRITICAL EVALUATION OF FRANKENSTEIN, PUT A BOX AROUND ALL LITERARY TERMS, CIRCLE THEMATIC CONCEPTS, UNDERLINE STRONG VERBS (5) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley Born: August 30, 1797; London, England Died: February 1, 1851; London, England First published: 1818 Type of work: Gothic Novel Time of plot: Eighteenth century Frankenstein began as a short story written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley while on summer vacation in Switzerland with her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet Lord Byron, and physician-writer John William Polidori. First published anonymously in 1818, the novel, in a revised version, was re-released in 1831, crediting Mary Shelley as the author and including an autobiographical introduction, reflecting on her life and the novel’s authorship.

The novel’s themes center on the social and cultural aspects of society during Shelley’s lifetime, including the movement away from the intellectually confining Enlightenment. The characters struggle against societal control. The monster, in particular, an outcast from society, evokes reader empathy with his subsequent rage. Nature and science, opposing forces during the time period, provide important themes shaping the novel.

Shelley employs many stylistic techniques in Frankenstein. She uses explorer Robert Walton’s epistolary communication with his sister as part of an outer frame structure that segues into a flashback of Victor Frankenstein’s experiences leading up to and after the creation of the monster. Shelley employs first-person narrative in Walton’s voice, while the core chapters offer Victor’s personal narration. In addition, Shelley uses dialogue to provide the thoughts of other characters, such as the monster. Characteristics of gothic horror, including a foreboding setting, violent and mysterious events, and a decaying society, pervade the novel.

Many themes in Frankenstein represent not only the social and political theories of Shelley’s time but also those that followed. For example, Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex relates to Victor’s attempts to replace his deceased mother by “birthing” a being who represents her. Elaborating on this theory, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan adds a pre-Oedipal stage, in which young children learn language through nonverbal communication -- evident in Victor’s attempt to learn the language of the sciences, and in the creature’s attempt to seek knowledge about society and language. Victor and the creature are “doubles” (or mirrors) of each other because they are both struck with the inability to successfully communicate with society.

Another theme, the search by the novel’s male protagonists for a teacher who will provide political and social guidance, represents Lockean theory, which claims that education determines a person’s level of value in society. For example, during a conversation with Victor, Walton denounces his lack of formal education, demonstrating his lack of a friend (or formal teacher) to lead him to enlightenment. Additionally, Victor acknowledges his father’s lack of leadership in guiding his interest in the natural sciences.

Prior to the 1970’s, most criticism about Frankenstein focused on Shelley’s life and the story behind the novel’s authorship and creation. As the novel received increased critical attention, evaluations started to focus on its storyline and characters as a reflection of the author. This change in focus occurred in part due to the emergence of feminist theory in the 1970’s and 1980’s, asserting the academic value and significance of female writers. Critics evaluated the work’s lack of dominant female characters and its attention to the idea of the Romantic artist.

Frankenstein revolutionized the genres of gothic literature, science fiction, and horror stories, and elevated the status of the Romantic artist. Written by Shelley when she was only nineteen years old, the novel offers artistic flare, originality, and a maturity beyond Shelley’s age. In the last decades of the twentieth century, this work reached a new status in critical evaluation. It remains an undisputed fictional masterpiece.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

4

STEP THREE: CONSIDER THE NOVEL FROM SEVERAL CRITICAL CONTEXTS

I. STRUCTURAL CONTEXT A. EPISTOLARY NOVEL

Epistolary was formed from the noun epistle, which refers to a composition written in the form of a letter to a particular person or group. In its original sense, epistle refers to one of the 21 letters (such as those from the apostle Paul) found in the New Testament. Dating from the 13th century, epistle came to English via Anglo-French and Latin from the Greek noun epistolē, meaning "message" or "letter." Epistolary appeared in English four centuries after epistle and can be used to describe something related to or contained in a letter (as in "epistolary greetings") or composed of letters (as in "an epistolary novel"). NOTE: Margaret Walton Saville, the English sister of Robert Walton (with whom he shares the tale of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature in his letters from sea) shares the same initials --- M.W.S. --- as our novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. LIST OTHER LETTERS INCLUDED IN THE NOVEL (5) (include the parenthetical citation for the pages on which letters occur): ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

B. FRAME NARRATIVE

C. “I BEGAN” – NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE

29 first-person singular pronouns in this paragraph; similarly, there are another 29 first-person pronouns (26 singular) in 1.3.3, as well as 25 in 1.3.4 (where Victor dissolves his egocentrism in pontificatory admonishment of Walton's ambition), and a full 40 such pronouns in 1.3.6. Mary Shelley thus dexterously underscores Victor's total self-involvement in his scientific pursuit.

D. IT WAS ON A DREARY NIGHT OF NOVEMBER

Mary Shelley first wrote the line above in the composition of the novel, according to the account she gave of its gestation in the preface of 1831. She later added the opening exposition.

CAPTAIN ROBERT WALTON’S LETTERS (ADDRESSED TO HIS SISTER)

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN’S TALE (TOLD TO WALTON AT SEA)

THE CREATURE’S TALE (TOLD TO VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN)

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

5

II. GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXTS SYMBOLISM OF SETTING: CREATE A COLLAGE OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS IN THE NOVEL. USE 8 ½ X 11 IN PAPER. (25) Mary Shelley creates a strong sense of place in Frankenstein. From the polar expedition that opens the novel to the list of cities Frankenstein passes through in his pursuit of the Creature, Mary Shelley refers to dozens of places, familiar and suggestive to early nineteenth-century readers.

The opening of the novel on Walton's search for a polar passage generically aligns the novel with accounts of travel and exploration, a popular genre at the time. The great age of exploration begun in the Renaissance continued up to Mary Shelley's day: Captain Cook discovered Australia in 1770, and searches for a Northern Passage continued well into the nineteenth century. The anonymous Letters Written during the Late Voyage of Discovery in the Western Arctic Sea (1821), for instance, although published after Frankenstein, bears some striking resemblances to the novel. Not all travel writing dealt with exotic locations: Mary Wollstonecraft left a travel narrative, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and Mary Shelley's own History of a Six Weeks' Tour includes descriptions of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. Many of the places mentioned in her travel narrative appear in Frankenstein, and acquire a particular resonance from Mary Shelley's first-hand experience.

A. MONT BLANC

Mont Blanc, at 15,781 feet the highest peak in Europe, marks the border between France and Italy.Jacques Balmat and Michel Gabriel Paccard first climbed the mountain in 1786. When the Shelley party visited Mont Blanc, five successful expeditions, two of them British, had occurred. Although well aware of the successful mountain scaling expeditions, Percy Bysshe Shelley represents the summit of the mountain as never having been intruded upon by a human being in his poem "Mont Blanc," written during the summer of 1816. In the novel, Victor characterizes its perpetual snowcap as the "bright summit of Mont Blanc."

B. VAULTS AND CHARNEL HOUSES

Johnson in his 1755 Dictionary defines a charnel house as "The place under churches where the bones of the dead are reposited" and a vault as simply "a repository for the dead." By the latter Victor Frankenstein probably means to distinguish a mausoleum. Body-snatching or grave-robbing, a means of supplying cadavers for medical experiments and instruction, was a source of great anxiety in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was, of course, a criminal activity.

C. CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN D. GENEVA, SWITZERLAND E. OXFORD, ENGLAND F. CHAMONIX, FRANCE G. ORKNEY ISLANDS, SCOTLAND H. GULF OF SPEZIA, ITALY I. ARCHANGEL, RUSSI J. ANY ADDITIONAL LOCALES/ SETTINGS

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

6

III. CONTEXT -- THE SUBLIME The sublime, a notion in aesthetic and literary theory, represents a striking grandeur of thought and emotion.

The locus classicus is Peri Hypsous (first translated as On the Sublime in 1712), long attributed to a Greek writer called Longinus. Longinus defines literary sublimity as "excellence in language," the "expression of a great spirit," and the power to provoke "ecstasy."

Longinus's conception of the sublime had its heyday in English criticism in the late seventeenth through the middle eighteenth century, and over time its meaning expanded to include not only literature, but any aesthetic phenomenon -- even including nature itself, particularly mountains or desolate and striking landscapes -- that produced sensations of awe or even of pain in its audience. John Baillie describes this effect in his Essay on the Sublime (1747), "Vast Objects occasion vast Sensations, and vast Sensations give the Mind a higher Idea of her own Powers."

Critics found examples of the literary sublime in the Bible and in Shakespeare, but for most of the eighteenth century, Milton best embodied sublimity, especially in Paradise Lost: as Joseph Addison put it in Spectator 279, "Milton's chief Talent, and indeed his distinguishing Excellence, lies in the Sublimity of his Thoughts."

Sublimity became a central concern not only in eighteenth-century criticism, but in eighteenth-century literature, especially in the works of the so-called pre-Romantic poets. The most important late eighteenth-century work on the sublime is Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), which influenced early nineteenth-century English thought on the subject.

IV. CONTEXT - BIBLICAL ALLUSION A. CREATION

Although Frankenstein makes almost no overt reference to conventional Western religions, the Biblical account of the creation in Genesis 1-3 resonates continually within the text, so much so that the novel itself, like Milton's Paradise Lost before it, implicitly aspires to the mythic level of that resonance.

B. EVE

As with the Genesis account of the creation of Adam, but even more pronouncedly, two versions of the creation of Eve exist, and their basic incompatibility enormously effected Western cultural history. In the first, Eve represents an essential part of Adam, created as one with him and therefore coequal. 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

In the second version God creates Eve from Adam's bod as Adam's "help meet," an "assistant" to him. Adam, in turn, names her at the end of his task of naming "every living creature," and he so names her that her emanation from himself becomes the principle of her very nature: wo-man. Then, upon the fall, he renames her as Eve. This control over her name and her existence provides the basis for the almost universal Western custom of women taking the men’s names in marriage. 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

7

2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Milton, in his characterization of Eve, accentuates Eve's individuality and sense of selfhood: first, in her contemplating her image in the pool, and second, with a remarkable departure from the scriptural text, in her task of naming all the flora, as Adam names the fauna. Moreover, Adam himself acknowledges Eve's exceptional nature, in the famous passage in which he recalls his first sight of her: Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,/In every gesture dignity and love.”

Although the Creature in Frankenstein explicitly identifies himself with Adam and exactly like Adam, appeals to his creator for a companion, more seasoned readers of Paradise Lost (who, unlike the Creature, do not read it in a French translation) recognized many ways in which Shelley modelled him after Eve. The signal occurs in his viewing himself in a pool and thereby discovering his monstrosity.

1. Breathless Horror (42) The difference in the Genesis account of human creation versus Victor’s Frankenstein’s wretched creation of the creature prove pronounced:

1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Victor's adjective "breathless" may be intended by Mary Shelley to resonate ironically against the moment in Genesis in which Adam is actually brought to life:

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

8

2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

V. CONTEXT - MYTHOLOGICAL ALLUSION A. PROMETHEUS

Prometheus -- his Greek name means forethought -- a Titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity, initiates all the arts of human civilization but angers the Gods, especially Zeus. In various versions of the myth, Prometheus acts as the creator of humankind, molding human beings from clay, and guarding humanity against the angry Gods. Another account, (clearly represented in Percy Bysshe Shelley's drama, Prometheus Unbound), holds that the Titans and Gods remained equally matched in their internecine war until Prometheus struck a deal with Zeus to throw his power on the side of the Gods in return for a pledge that Zeus would free humankind from servitude. After Zeus won, he reneged on his promise and chained Prometheus, along with the other Titans, for perpetuity.

For his actions, Prometheus was severely punished by Zeus. In the version related by Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound, the most influential account from classical antiquity, Zeus chained Prometheus to Mount Caucasus and set upon him an eagle (in other versions a vulture) who each day ate away at his liver which would be regenerated by night.

Mary Shelley’s father, wrote books for children, under the pseudonym "Edward Baldwin," including a handbook of classical mythology with a section devoted to various versions of the Prometheus myth. Shelley’s 1815 reading list included Ovid's Metamorphoses, which registers in its early lines two main threads of the Prometheus legend, Prometheus as bearer of fire and as creator of humankind.

VI. CONTEXT - LITERARY ALLUSIONS A. ROMANTIC POETS

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, English poet and philosopher who along with William Wordsworth, published the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Coleridge became a central figure in the history of early British Romanticism. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," twice directly cited in the novel (see Walton's second letter to Mrs. Saville) and frequently also the subject of subtle allusion casts a long shadow over its conceptions. Accordingly, Coleridge was a frequent guest in the Godwin household. Mary Shelley never forgot the experience of hearing Coleridge recite his "Rime" as she hid behind the sofa.

2. George Gordon, Lord Byron Byron, 1788-1824, English poet and friend of Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The three met through the agency of Claire Clairmont, daughter of Godwin's second wife and therefore Mary Godwin's step-sister and just eight months her junior. A certain competitiveness existed between the two as girls in the Godwin household and later in their adolescence. Claire encouraged the elopement of Mary with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley and went along on the expedition through France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, recounted in Mary's History of a Six Weeks' Tour. Upon their return she set up as part of the household. Determined to make her own fortune within the literary

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

9

pantheon, Claire, in an elaborate scheme, managed to seduce Byron during his last weeks in England. Finding herself pregnant, she then managed to get her household to move to Geneva in order to secure from Byron a provision for her expected child.

Byron includes a description of such a night-time storm in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 3, stanzas 92-95:

XCII Thy sky is changed! -- and such a change! Oh night, 860 And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! XCIII And this is in the night: Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be 870 A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, -- A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black, -- and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, English poet. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. This celebrated volume begins with Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and ends with Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." Shelley directly quotes both poems in the epistles of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley's emphasis on the bounty and balance of nature in the novel may testify to Wordsworth's enduring impact on her thought.

4. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY In 1812, three years before the summer in which Mary conceived Frankenstein, Percy Bysshe Shelley published the first of the couple's reinterpretations of the Prometheus myth, suggesting that the significance of the titan's carrying fire to earth was as a means of introducing flesh-eating to humanity. From that point on the pristine human civilization was ravaged by disease. This seventeenth of the sometimes very long endnotes to his "philosophical poem" Queen Mab was republished as a pamphlet called A Vindication of Natural Diet in 1813. The Shelleys, (and the Creature), remain vegetarians.

B. DANTE AND THE INFERNO (42)

In the lower circles of the Inferno, Dante represents sinners grotesquely transfigured by the nature of their sins, as their physical presence imitates the moral condition of their souls. Frankenstein reminds us that in the medieval Christian universe no one is born damned, but rather must actively estrange the self from God's merciful love in order to embrace damnation as a principle of one's being. Victor also unwittingly raises the disturbing question underscored in

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

10

the ensuing paragraph: in a world where man plays God, what is the state of damnation and what constitutes hell?

C. JOHN MILTON AND PARADISE LOST

how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge -- Paradise Lost, VIII.167-178

More than any other literary forebear, John Milton's Paradise Lost stands as a continuing intellectual and mythic reference point for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Published as an epic poem in ten books in 1667, it was restructured for its second edition of twelve books in the year of Milton's death, 1674. By the end of the eighteenth century, Paradise Lost claimed an unquestionable prominence, even preeminence, among the treasures of English literary art and began to exert a broad influence on the emerging literature of Romanticism. Although the impact can be felt on every one of the major Romantic poets, as well as on dozens of minor ones as well, it is a curious and even wonderful truth that nowhere in this rich literature does Milton's epic resonate as richly and subtly as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Additionally, the Percy Bysshe Shelley, a devoted follower of "the sacred Milton," as he referred to him in the Preface to Prometheus Unbound, continually allowed his own work to resonate with deliberate allusions to Paradise Lost.

VII. CONTEXT – SCIENCE, MEDECINE, AND MYSTICISM A. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

What we now loosely call science -- meaning the physical sciences -- was until the mid-nineteenth century referred to under the rubric of "natural philosophy." The long-lived journal of the Royal Society, begun under Charles II in 1660 and still the principal avenue for publishing scientific discoveries in English during Mary Shelley's day, was called Philosophical Transactions. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the heyday of British chemistry, the branch of natural philosophy most implicated in Victor's education and obsessiveness.

B. CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, 1486-1535, German mystic and alchemist. Agrippa of Nettesheim was born of a once-noble family near Cologne, and studied both medicine and law, apparently without taking a degree. In 1503, he assumed the name Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, adopting the von to suggest a noble background; three years later, he established a secret society in Paris devoted to astrology, magic, and Kabbalah.Many of his opinions were controversial. His early lectures on theology angered the Church, and his defense of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1520 led to his being hounded out of Cologne by the Inquisition. In his own day, Agrippa was widely attacked as a charlatan. After his death, legends about him were plentiful. Some believed him to be not only an alchemist but a demonic magician, even a vampire. In one account, he traveled to the New World. Percy Bysshe Shelley listed Agrippa and Paracelsus among his favorite writers in a discussion with Godwin in 1812.

C. ELECTRICITY & LIGHTNING

The vast power of a sublime nature prepares us for the creation of a being animated by and associated with the "vital fluid" of electricity. However, as with the previous eruption of lightning within the text Shelley implicitly emphasizes not its creative power, but its capacity for destruction.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

11

VIII. CREATURE/CREATION CONTEXTS

one hand was stretched out (42) LEONARDO DA VINCI – “The Creation of Adam”

Unable . . . unable (42): The double emphasis on his impotence calls into play both the heavy irony of Victor's having given birth by himself and his habitual manner of ducking responsibility for his actions he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled (42): Irresistibly amusing and at the same time grotesque, Shelley creates an image of an eight-foot baby muttering nonsense syllables and sweetly smiling. The first image of the Creature with a grin on his face, however, proves highly suggestive philosophically and politically. The "pursuit of happiness" is a moral and political premise to the late eighteenth-century world into which the Creature comes as new-born. As for the Creature's first interaction with a human being, a reader may well wonder whether it registers upon Victor -- or upon Mary Shelley -- that this initial close encounter comes via the German word for the mother he lacks, Mutter. demoniacal corpse (42): The monstrous is further mystified, not just as a zombie, who has come by black magic into a false and unnatural vitality, but also as a demon, a supernatural embodiment of evil. He progresses from the wretched (alienated) to wretch (marginally human) to monster (inhuman) to demon (antihuman).

IX. BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXTS her mother could not endure her (49): A curious imposition on Mary Shelley's novel and one that has raised eyebrows among critics with a biographical orientation, both because of the death of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft after giving birth and because of her adversion to her step-mother Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin. she was induced to give her an education (49): In a novel so concerned with education this emphasis on Justine's advancement testifies to Mary Shelley's belief in its universal value. Her father William Godwin in Political Justice (1793) argues a similar message later adopted in the strong democratic sentiments Mary Shelley shared with her husband. Under her father's tutelege, Mary Godwin enjoyed an education equalled by only a handful of young women. William (49): At his introduction in the novel William is about seven years old and clearly modeled in this description on Mary's infant son William. Louisa Biron (49): an in-joke among the writing friends, since Lord Byron's name, in Geneva, would have been pronounced in the same French manner as this young friend of Elizabeth's would be, bee-ROHN. Byron intended to give Allegra, the illegitimate daughter Claire Clairmont bore in January 1817, the name of Biron.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

12

Duvillard (51): In Geneva Mary Shelley hired a local nursemaid for her son William named Louise Duvillard, who remained with the Shelley family until 1818, when she left them to marry in Naples. William Frankenstein's sweetheart bears her first name, and this rich banker her second. To some extent Justine Moritz may be modeled on her.

CHARACTER STUDY GUIDE: USE THE COMPRHENSIVE LIST OF CHARACTERS TO STUDY FOR THE TEST OF SUMMER READING

FRANKENSTEIN FAMILY & CLOSEST FRIENDS

Beaufort Close friend of Alphonse Frankenstein; father of Caroline, who becomes his wife.

Victor Frankenstein relates Beaufort’s background: “From a flourishing state, he fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition, and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness.”

His seclusion shelters him even from Alphonse Frankenstein, who finds him only with difficulty. Destroyed by grief, Beaufort is reduced to utter inaction, and is confined to bed for ten months, at the end of which he dies. His daughter, Caroline, who watched over him during his sickness, is devastated by his death. At this time, Alphonse "came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife."

NOTE: a good French-sounding name for a citizen of Lucerne, but it is at least a nice coincidence that the Beaufort Sea south of the Arctic Ocean, on the northwestern coast of Canada and Alaska, was named after a contemporary of Mary Shelley's, Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857).

Alphonse Frankenstein Father of Victor, Ernest, and William Frankenstein; husband of Caroline; uncle and adoptive father of Elizabeth.

Alphonse Frankenstein, syndic (magistrate) of Geneva, comes from a long line of syndics. Victor describes his character and his devotion to public duty:

“My father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; and it was not until the decline of life that he thought of marrying, and bestowing on the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity.”

Alphonse dies of an apoplectic fit after hearing of the death of Elizabeth.

Caroline Frankenstein Daughter of M. Beaufort; mother of Victor, Ernest, and William Frankenstein; wife of Alphonse; aunt and adoptive mother of Elizabeth; mother surrogate to Justine Moritz.

Beaufort, in his decline into poverty and wretchedness, brings Caroline with him, and during his final illness, she ministers to him for ten months. Finally, her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

13

overcame her; and she knelt by Beaufort's coffin, weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care, and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva, and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife. (1.1.2)

Caroline Frankenstein, after adopting Elizabeth, determines that she and Victor should marry. Before Victor leaves for his university, Elizabeth is stricken with scarlet fever, and as Caroline stays with her to care for her, she contracts the disease. Elizabeth recovers, but Caroline's fever is fatal.

Elizabeth Lavenza Frankenstein Cousin, adopted sister, and eventually wife of Victor Frankenstein

The Frankenstein family adopted Elizabeth, and Caroline Frankenstein early planned that Elizabeth should be Victor's future wife. Frankenstein describes her character at length:

“She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect. Although she was lively and animated, her feelings were strong and deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate. No one could better enjoy liberty, yet no one could submit with more grace than she did to constraint and caprice. Her imagination was luxuriant, yet her capability of application was great. Her person was the image of her mind; her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird's, possessed an attractive softness. Her figure was light and airy; and, though capable of enduring great fatigue, she appeared the most fragile creature in the world. While I admired her understanding and fancy, I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favourite animal; and I never saw so much grace both of person and mind united to so little pretension.”

Although Elizabeth does not share Frankenstein's alchemical interests she is educated with him; and when Caroline Frankenstein dies of scarlet fever contracted from Elizabeth, it is Elizabeth who takes over the maternal duties of the Frankenstein family. During Frankenstein's residence in Ingolstadt, Elizabeth writes regularly, and it falls to her to describe Justine's background. Both Frankenstein and Elizabeth are active in Justine's unsuccessful defense.

Ernest Frankenstein Younger son of Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein, brother to Victor and William. The only Frankenstein to survive the novel

Victor Frankenstein describes his younger brother:

“Ernest was six years younger than myself, and was my principal pupil. He had been afflicted with ill health from his infancy, through which Elizabeth and I had been his constant nurses: his disposition was gentle, but he was incapable of any severe application.”

Victor Frankenstein Son of Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein; brother to Ernest and William; cousin, adoptive brother, and later husband to Elizabeth; childhood playfriend of Henry Clerval; student of Krempe and Waldman.

Rescued from an icefloe in the Arctic Ocean, Frankenstein narrates the complete novel to Robert Walton. Born in Geneva, Victor is educated at the University of Ingolstadt in chemistry. There his researches bring him to discover the secret of life, and he constructs and animates a giant being. Appalled by his ugliness, Victor flees, and upon returning to his lodgings finds the Creature gone. He suffers a nervous collapse and is nursed back to health over several months by Clerval, who has also come to the university to study.

William Frankenstein Youngest son of Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein, brother to Victor and Ernest.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

14

Victor Frankenstein describes William in the novel's first chapter:

“William, the youngest of our family, was yet an infant, and the most beautiful little fellow in the world; his lively blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, and endearing manners, inspired the tenderest affection.”

While Frankenstein is at Ingolstadt, Elizabeth provides this account of "darling William": "he is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. He has already had one or two little wives, but Louisa Biron is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age.” William is murdered by the Creature, who discovers that he is a relation of Frankenstein (2.8.9), and Justine Moritz is framed for the murder.

Henry Clerval Friend and schoolfellow of Victor and Elizabeth from childhood; murdered by the Creature.

Victor describes him as an only child, "the son of a merchant of Geneva, an intimate friend of my father. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy" (1.1.5). Clerval is almost a family member in the Frankensten household: when Victor complains that "My brothers were considerably younger than myself," he notes, "but I had a friend in one of my schoolfellows, who compensated for this deficiency" (1.1.5), and Victor includes Clerval in his account of his "domestic circle" because "he was constantly with us." The two are united by "the closest friendship" (1831 edition).After parting from Clerval on his departure for Ingolstadt, Victor does not see his friend until after the creation of the Creature: he arrives just in time to care for Victor in his first insane fever. After Frankenstein's recovery, Clerval convinces his father to allow him to join Frankenstein at the University, studying classical and Eastern languages.

In Percy Bysshe Shelley's first major poem, Queen Mab (1813), the male friend (and author-surrogate) who awaits the dreaming Ianthe's awakening is named Henry. Clerval is at least partly drawn as a portrait of an idealized Shelley.

THE CREATURE & HIS ACQUAINTANCES

The Creature

Frankenstein describes the Creature's creation:

“I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. ... As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large.”

Upon bringing his creation to life, however, he is terrified by its hideous appearance:

“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; 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 watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.”

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

15

Frankenstein rushes from the room and sees no more of his Creature until after William's death, when he encounters the Creature outside Geneva Later the Creature meets Frankenstein on the Mer de Glace, and there narrates fully a third of the novel to his creator, describing his first sensations, his first encounter with a terrified observer, and his discovery of a shelter beside the cottage of the De Laceys.

Agatha De Lacey Daughter of M. De Lacey and sister of Felix.

Agatha first appears anonymously (described only as "a young creature") in the Creature's narration:

“I ate my breakfast with pleasure, and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little water, when I heard a step, and, looking through a small chink, I beheld a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found cottagers and farm-house servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited, but not adorned; she looked patient, yet sad.”

She provides the Creature with his first experience of beauty.

The Creature first learns her name, as he learns the rudiments of language. Over time he comes to know her history: she once "had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction,” but after De Lacey's fall, she was imprisoned with her father (2.6.5). After five months in prison, the family was condemned to exile, and found "a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany," where the Creature first encounters her. In her last appearance in the novel, she faints from terror upon beholding the Creature When the Creature returns to the cottage, the De Laceys have deserted it.

Felix De Lacey Son of the blind M. De Lacey and brother of Agatha.

Through Felix's conversation and language tutoring to Safie, the Creature learns to speak and read. As he becomes more proficient in the language, he learns Felix's story: he had fallen in love with Safie and arranged her father's escape from prison, but, betrayed by her father, he finds his family imprisoned and Safie taken out of his reach. The De Laceys flee to "a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany." Felix remains unaware of the Creature until he returns to the cottage to find his father in the Creature's presence. Fearing for his father's safety, he "darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick.” The Creature flees; on his return, he discovers that the De Laceys have abandoned the cottage.

M. De Lacey Father of Agatha and Felix.

The Creature first observes De Lacey from the inside of his sty: "In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude.” He further describes the old man, who, taking up an instrument [a guitar], began to play, and to produce sounds, sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. ... The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager, won my reverence. The Creature soon discovers De Lacey is blind (2.4.1), and as he learns language, he learns about the family. He learns first their names and familial relations: "I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only one, which was father. The girl was called sister, or Agatha; and the youth Felix, brother, or son" (2.4.3). Later he learns their story:

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

16

“The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence, respected by his superiors, and beloved by his equals. His son was bred in the service of his country; and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction. A few months before my arrival, they had lived in a large and luxurious city, called Paris, surrounded by friends, and possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford.”

Safie Daughter of a Turkish merchant, adopted by the De Lacey family.

The Creature watches Safie's arrival at the cottage, admires her "countenance of angelic beauty,” and notes her cheering effect on Felix. He soon notices that as she "appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by, or herself understood, the cottagers" (2.5.2); the Creature resolves to use this to his advantage, learning the French language by overhearing Safie's language lessons. As the Creature learns a language, he learns the shared story of Safie and the De Laceys. Safie was the daughter of a Turkish merchant resident in Paris (2.6.1) and a Christian Arab, enslaved by the Turks (2.6.3), who had raised her as a Christian. Her father's arrest (on unspecified political grounds) leads Felix to vow to free him, and this attracts Safie to him. The night before his scheduled execution, he frees the Turk and conducts him to Leghorn with Safie. The Creature notes that "The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place," not wishing to lose Felix's help (2.6.4). But when the De Lacey family is imprisoned for assisting in his escape, "the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and impotence, became a traitor to good feeling and honour, and had quitted Italy with his daughter" (2.6.5).

Kirwin Irish magistrate who charges Victor Frankenstein with the death of Clerval.

When Frankenstein falls into another fever, this one lasting two months, Kirwin nurses him back to health until Victor's father arrives. Afterwards, Kirwin, convinced of Frankenstein's innocence, serves as his defense.

Justine Moritz Servant to the Frankenstein family and particular friend of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth relates how she came to join the Frankenstein household:

Madame Moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father; but, through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and, after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this; and, when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at her house.

Justine became a favorite of both Victor and his mother, and from them received an education. Accused of the murder of William, Justine is convicted on circumstantial evidence, and, although thought innocent by the entire Frankenstein family, is executed for the crime.

Robert Walton English ship's captain on an arctic expedition in search of the Northeast Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Rescuing Victor Frankenstein at sea, he is the recipient of the narrative of Victor's life.

Robert Walton writes the series of letters to his sister, Margaret Saville, that constitute the novel.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

17

Margaret Walton Saville Sister of Robert Walton and the recipient of the letters that constitute the novel. Although her brother's confidante, she disapproves of his expedition (the first sentence of the novel, Letter 1).

• Letter 1.1 and note ("Mrs. SAVILLE") • Letter 2.4 and note ("Your gentle and feminine fosterage") [1831 only] • Letter 4.7 and note ("Somewhat fastidious") [1831 only] • Walton 5 and note ("A husband, and lovely children")

Waldman Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, with a specialty in chemistry, and instructor of Victor Frankenstein.

Unlike Krempe, whom Frankenstein finds intellectually and physically repulsive, Waldman proves a kind and understanding teacher. His lecture on the history of chemistry shows more sympathy for the alchemists who had excited Frankenstein's imagination, and from that time on, Frankenstein looks to him as a mentor and a "true friend" (1.3.1). It is Waldman who interests Frankenstein in modern chemistry (1.2.7).

VISIT THE http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/ PRINT, READ, AND ANNOTATE AN ARTICLE FROM THE LIST BELOW. BE PREPARED TO DISCUSS THE ARTICLE.

Frankenstein – SECONDARY SOURCE Articles 1-209. See sample listed below:

1. Adams, "Frankenstein's Vegetarian Monster" 2. Aldiss, "The Origins of the Species" 3. Aldrich and Isomaki, "The Woman Writer as Frankenstein" 4. Baldick, "The Monster Speaks" 5. Baldick, "Tales of Transgression, Fables of Industry" 6. Balestra, "Technology in a Free Society" 7. Bayer-Berenbaum, "Frankenstein and On the Night of the Seventh Moon" 8. Behrendt, "The Woman Writer's Fate" 9. Bennett, "Feminism and Editing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" 10. Berman, "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Narcissus" 11. Bewell, "An Issue of Monstrous Desire" 12. Blumberg, "Frankenstein and the 'Good Cause'" 13. Bohls, "Standards of Taste" 14. Bok, "Monstrosity of Representation" 15. Botting, "Frankenstein, Werther and the Monster of Love" 16. Botting, "Frankenstein and the Language of Monstrosity" 17. Bowerbank, "The Social Order vs. the Wretch" 18. Brooks, "Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts" 19. Brooks, "What is a Monster?" 20. Brown, "Philosophical View of the Gothic Novel" 21. Buchen, "Frankenstein and the Alchemy of Creation" 22. Burwick, "Goethe's Werther and Frankenstein" 23. Cantor, "The Nightmare of Romantic Idealism" 24. Carson, "Bringing the Author Forward" 25. Cavaliero, "Watchers on the Threshold" 26. Claridge, "Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein" 27. Clayton, "Concealed Circuits" 28. Clemit, "Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's Myth-Making" 29. Clifford, "Caleb Williams and Frankenstein"

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

18

30. Clubbe, "The Tempest-Toss'd Summer of 1816" 31. Conger, "A German Ancestor for Shelley's Monster" 32. Cottom, "Frankenstein and the Monster of Representation" 33. Covi, "The Matrushka Monster" 34. Crawford, "Wading Through Slaughter" 35. Crisman, "Now Misery Has Come Home" 36. Crossley, "Artefacts from the Museums of Science Fiction" 37. Crouch, "Davy's Discourse" 38. Curran, "The Siege of Hateful Contraries" 39. Curran, "The Scientific Grounding of Frankenstein" 40. Davis, "Frankenstein and the Subversion of the Masculine Voice" 41. Dickerson, "The Ghost of a Self" 42. Dunn, "Narrative Distance in Frankenstein" 43. Dutoit, "Re-specting the Face as the Moral (of) Fiction" 44. Eichler, "Frankenstein and the Rocky Horror Picture Show" 45. Ellis, "Mary Shelley's Embattled Garden" 46. Ellis, "Monsters in the Garden" 47. Favret, "The Letters of Frankenstein" 48. Ferguson, "The Gothicism of the Gothic Novel" 49. Fleck, "Mary Shelley's Notes to Shelley's Poems" 50. Forry, "An Early Conflict Involving Presumption" 51. Forry, "Dramatizations of Frankenstein" 52. Foust, "Monstrous Image"

Major Themes in Frankenstein

• Adversarial Relations: involving motifs of antagonism, hatred, revenge; the definition of one's self by one's opposite. • Alienation: a sense of not belonging, either to a community or to one's own sense of self. • The Beautiful: as an Enlightenment category of aesthetics, invoked in conjunction with or opposition to the sublime. • Benevolence: among the highest of Enlightenment virtues, the active expression of love and sympathy for one's fellow

beings. • Social Class: linked to political power, access to education and justice throughout the novel. • Creation: involving both creativity, procreation, and the right and/or ability to create. • Death: the frequency of death, and the place of the dead, are both involved in this theme. • Delusion: the opposite of candor and truth, dissimulation involving others or oneself. • Depravity: a word subsuming both a sense of sin and original sin. • Destiny: or fate, or necessity; both as it may be self-energized or seen as an external force in control of the self. • Doubling: involving acting in the manner of another, art copying life, similarities of action between two figures, or the

eerie sense of there being a second self, a Doppelgänger. • Duty: both one's sense of obligation to one's fellow beings and one's sense of responsibility for oneself. • Education: how as well as what one learns. • Family: the value of the domestic circle is a central issue of this novel. • Family -- Domestic Affections: the value of shared and loving intimacy to be discerned, and experienced, in family life. • Family -- Mother: the role and the relationships established by the maternal figure. • Family -- Orphan: this surprisingly common condition in the novel suggests an obverse condition to that of the enclosing

domestic affections.. • Family -- Patriarch: the role and relationships established by, or expected of, fathers in the novel. • Family -- Son: the role and responsibilities of male children in the novel. • Female Friendship: the value of bonding among women. • Gender Roles: how one fulfills or departs from stereotyped expectations of the male or female. • Guilt: Not just the sense of remorse, but how it is generated, and its value or dangers.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

19

• Health: both its abstract meaning as a sign of well-being, and the specific ways in which an individual's health becomes affected by mental and physical conditions.

• Imagination: a Romantic icon, highly problematized in the course of the novel. • Justice: how it functions; who is in control of it; who suffers or is privileged by it. • Knowledge: its uses and abuses. • Language: both how it is acquired and functions and how it affects communicaiton among human beings. • Madness: the novel implicitly questions what is to be construed as sane behavior, particularly in the character of Victor

Frankenstein. • Male Friendship: male bonding among the principal human characters is unusually pronounced, as is the fact of the

Creature's isolation from it. • Naming: the Creature in this edition is identified as "the Creature" because that is what he calls himself and he is given no

other name; but he is constantly defined, especially by Victor, by other names. • Narrative: both the self-consciousness with which characters in the novel attend to their narratives, and the larger

question of how its events are controlled through their telling. • Nature: the meaning and function of "nature" in the novel. • Passion: as opposed to the "domestic affections," the values comprised by it, the implicit dangers within it to the self and

others. • Perspective: involving the ways in which viewpoint can shift meaning throughout the novel. • • Self-Analysis: involving the importance, or dangers, of holding a mirror up to the self. • Sexuality: the role, also the displacement, of physical desire. • Solitude: involving its effects on various characters in the novel • Sublime: a crucial term in Enlightenment aesthetics, in contrast to the beautiful; frequently invoked throughout the novel. • Truth: involving not just candor but the problematics of fiction.

X. Percy Bysshe Shelley A. Poet Details 1792–1822

The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Romanticism’s major themes emerge in Shelley’s dramatic life and in his works, enigmatic, inspiring, and lasting: the restlessness and brooding, the rebellion against authority, the interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry,

the pursuit of ideal love, and the untamed spirit ever in search of freedom. While Shelley shares many basic themes and symbols with his great contemporaries, he left his peculiar stamp on Romanticism: the creation of powerful symbols in his visionary pursuit of the ideal, at the same time tempered by a deep skepticism. He insistently took the controversial side of issues, even at the risk of being unpopular and ridiculed. From the very beginning of his career as a published writer at the precocious age of seventeen, throughout his life, and even to the present day the very name of Shelley evokes either the strongest vehemence or the warmest praise, bordering on worship.

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

20

Prometheus Unbound SCENE.—A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.

Prometheus. Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope. Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:— More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever! No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below, Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever! The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains Eat with their burning cold into my bones. Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips His beak in poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by, The ghastly people of the realm of dream, Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again behind: While from their loud abysses howling throng The genii of the storm, urging the rage Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. And yet to me welcome is day and night, Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom

ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE & COMPOSITION: SUMMER READING AND ASSIGNMENTS [Publish Date]

21

—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim— Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood From these pale feet, which then might trample thee If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven! How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief, Not exultation, for I hate no more, As then ere misery made me wise. The curse Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains, Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell! Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air, Through which the Sun walks burning without beams! And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, As thunder, louder than your own, made rock The orbèd world! If then my words had power, Though I am changed so that aught evil wish Is dead within; although no memory be Of what is hate, let them not lose it now! What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.