The novel and authorship

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The novel and authorship

• Dr Cathia Jenainati
• H539

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Plan

• Frankenstein and the Gothic tradition
• The novel and authorship
• Circumstances of the novels genesis
• Shelleys revised preface of 1831
• Authorship and adaptations
• Authorial intervention (structure)
• Theories of authorship
• Synthesis

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Not Gothic

• No vulnerable heroine at centre
• No focus on castle / house / trappings-passages /
  cellars / attics
• Geographical movements
• Not supernatural

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Gothic elements

• fear
• vestiges of the supernatural in language
• unhallowed acts
• psychological doubling
• the central act of the protagonist is to
  interpret.

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(No Transcript)
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Circumstances of writing

• In 1816
• Second preface in 1831
• She felt that blank incapability of invention
  which is the greatest misery of authorship

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• Luigi Galvani, Animal Electricity

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• Many and long were the conversations between Lord
  Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but
  nearly silent listener. During one of these,
  various philosophical doctrines were discussed,
  and among others the nature of the principle of
  life, and whether there was any probability of
  its ever being discovered and communicated. They
  talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin, who
  preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case,
  till by some extraordinary means it began to move
  with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would
  life be given. 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
  endured with vital warmth.

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• Erasmus Darwin
• The Botanic Garden 1791

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• Frightful as it must be for supremely frightful
  would be the effect of any human endeavour to
  mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of
  the World
• the working of some powerful engine"

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The 1831 Introduction

• replaces, re-presents or transforms the text
  with the imposition of a new frame, a frame which
  then grounds critical interpretations. (Fred
  Botting)

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Joseph Kestner, Narcissism as symptom and
structure the case of Mary Shelleys
Frankenstein

• Mise en abyme

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New critics

• Wimsatt and Beardsley, the intentional fallacy
  (1954)
• The critics text vs the authors text
• the authors intentions are impossible to
  decipher and are not necessary for understanding
  her work
• The autotelic text autonomous text

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But

• New Critics position was countered by
  ideologically driven critics such as
• Marxist
• Feminist
• New historicist
• who restored the authors milieu to the text

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But,

• Roland Barthes The death of the authorthe
  birth of the reader
• Michel Foucault the author occupies a
  subjecting function

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Paul OFlinn

• the 2 issues that influenced the story were the
  impact of technological developments on peoples
  lives and the possibility of working-class
  revolution
• Those issues fuel the Luddite disturbances
  1811-1817

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Luddite disturbances

• Luddites smashing loom in a factory in 1811

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Irish Frankenstein

• The caricature identifies the Phoenix Park
  assassinations as the work of the Irish
  parliamentary leader Charles Stuart Parnell.