Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is the best novel ever written by a teenager. Conceived in 1816, the ‘year without a summer’, in the same charged conversations with Byron, Shelley, Polidori, and Claire Clairmont at the Villa Diodati that spawned Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ (1819), by the time it was published Mary Godwin Shelley had just turned 20 and borne three children. By the time she turned 22 all three children were dead, and her extraordinary novel was largely lost to her, wrenched in its popular stage adaptions to become the familiar fable of science inevitably running amok - its standard ‘meaning’ ever since, sustained by the frightening image of Boris Karloff from James Whale’s hugely influential early film treatment.
But Mary Shelley’s original tale with its questions about creating and being responsible for life have never quite gone away, and in the 20th century her ethical imperatives began to re-emerge more strongly. After a long look at her original, this course moves on to consider two other forms the Frankenstein-story has lately taken. The first is Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), better known by its cinematic title, Blade Runner, which asks the question of Artificial Intelligence and organic assumptions about it. And the second is Marge Piercy’s He, She and It (1991, known as Body of Glass outside the USA), which also has an android in an unexpected role, but additionally brings in the old Jewish tale of Rabbi Loew and the Golem of Prague, where even clay may grow tall, and speak other words than its maker expects.
In the final session we will briefly add some other versions - Edward Scissorhands, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which was no such thing), a current concern with clones - as we consider how one popular tale can be revised, redacted, and appropriated as a vehicle for moral and political concerns.
Learning outcomes
- To understand the genesis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein;
- To understand its cultural appropriation in transition; and
- To trace its reformulation and reiteration in more recent works.
