In Frankenstein's Shadow

This book surveys the early history of one of our most important modern myths: the story of Frankenstein and the monster he created from dismembered corpses, as it appeared in fictional and other writings before its translation to the cinema screen. It examines the range of meanings which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers in the light of the political images of 'monstrosity' generated by the French Revolution. Later chapters trace the myth's analogues and protean transformations in subsequent writings, from the tales of Hoffmann and Hawthorne to the novels of Dickens, Melville, Conrad, and Lawrence, taking in the historical and political writings of Carlyle and Marx as well as the science fiction of Stevenson and Wells. The author shows that while the myth did come to be applied metaphorically to technological development, its most powerful associations have centred on relationships between people, in the family, in work, and in politics.

ISBN 0198122497   Pages 218 ISBN13 9780198122494 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 306 Imprint Clarendon Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Series title Clarendon Paperbacks Publication date 21 Jun 1990   Height (mm) 217 Non-book description xi207   Width (mm) 139 Library of Congress PR469.M6   Spine width (mm) 13 DEWEY 820.9375   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC20

The politics of monstrosity; the monster speaks - Mary Shelley's novel; tales of transgression, fables of industry - Hoffman, Hawthorne, Melville and Gaskell; the galvanic world - Carlyle and the Dickens monster; Karl Marx's vampires and grave-diggers; dangerous discoveries and mad scientists - some late-Victorian horrors; monsters of empire - Conrad and Lawrence; realism and the aspiring anatomist.

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