DOCSLIB.ORG

Byron's "Manfred" and the Greek Imaginary

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Byron's View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Nottingham ePrints Leman, Lucia (2014) Byron's "Manfred" and the Greek imaginary. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13972/1/phd_thesis.pdf Copyright and reuse: The Nottingham ePrints service makes this work by researchers of the University of Nottingham available open access under the following conditions. · Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. · To the extent reasonable and practicable the material made available in Nottingham ePrints has been checked for eligibility before being made available. · Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not- for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. · Quotations or similar reproductions must be sufficiently acknowledged. Please see our full end user licence at: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/end_user_agreement.pdf A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. For more information, please contact [email protected] BYRON’S MANFRED AND THE GREEK IMAGINARY LUCIA LEMAN, M.A. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, November 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vi Abbreviations .......................................................................................... vii Introduction: The Greek Imaginary ........................................................ 1 Chapter One: Byron’s Intellectual and Classical Formation ................... 31 Chapter Two: Byron’s Levantine Tour .................................................. 67 Chapter Three: Byron’s Continental Tour ............................................. 111 Chapter Four: Manfred in Conversation with Ancient Greece ............. 162 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 203 Bibliography .......................................................................................... 213 ABSTRACT Using Jerome J. McGann’s suggestion that the earliest fragments of Manfred might have been written during his Levantine Tour (c 2 July 1809 – 14 July 1811), this thesis aims to offer a new perspective on Byron’s Manfred, taking into account issues inherent in Byron’s patrician upbringing, his experience of Ottoman Greece, his notion of a Classical tradition, and his previous Byronic heroes. The majority of motifs previously perceived as “Gothic” can thus be seen in a new light, namely, as “Greek”. Another inspiration for a “Greek” reading of Manfred has been the fact that Western-European formative education and the literary canon have been based on works written by fifth- century BC Athenian writers, works which evoke a model of intellectual and political sophistication which I call, “the Greek imaginary” on the basis of its essentially fictive quality. However, the Greek imaginary formed part of a nobleman’s education from the days of fifth-century Athens until well after Byron’s age, by the time of which “Greekness” was a form of noblesse oblige amongst privileged North-Western Europeans, while “Greece” denoted a sense of the (imaginary) origin of Western- European culture. In effect, this thesis offers an insight into Byron’s Greek imaginary, shaped by the poet’s Classical education, his loyalty to the British patrician class, and his choice of reading matter from childhood onwards, as well as by what I call, his “inner Greek landscape”, namely an inner mental construct formed during his Levantine Grand Tour, wherein the “Oriental” Greek landscape was tempered by the literary landscapes of his Classical primers. This study provides a detailed account of the ideological and cultural traditions in which Byron’s intellect was formed, showing how the landscapes of Western Greece and Switzerland were conflated with the literary landscapes of Pausanias, Longinus and English pastoral poetry. The Introduction surveys the Greek imaginary, its historical dissemination, its respective appropriations by the Roman Empire and by North-Western Europeans, especially by British Whigs, and its legacy within British poetry, especially regarding the description of mountain landscapes. Aiming to facilitate an insight into Byron’s formative experiences, the chapter offers a survey of eighteenth-century Philhellenism and its socio-political conditions, namely the institution of the Grand Tour, burgeoning Orientalism, Winckelmann's aesthetic reassessment of the plastic arts (followed by the trends of antiquarianism and the picturesque in British painting) and the French Revolution. Here, I draw an ideological and aesthetic distinction between the Greek imaginary and Gothicism and then I outline Byron's Greek imaginary. Chapter One assesses Byron’s intellectual formation from the time he was taught to read until the moment of his Grand Tour (c 1794 – 1809), reviewing it within the cultural and ideological framework of the British Whigs, whose education was based on the study of Ancient Greek and Latin and whose adult culture displayed the dissemination of tropes taken from Classical texts, for example the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, within Whig gentlemen’s clubs, and pastoral and travel writing. In effect, both Byron’s comprehensive knowledge of Ancient Greek history and literature and his Enlightened Orientalism can be read as a product of his patrician upbringing. Chapter Two follows the movements of Byron and John Cam Hobhouse in Western Greece prior to their arrival in Athens (c October – December 1809) with Pausanias and the Arnaout servants of the tyrant Ali Pasha as their guides and protectors. It is argued that Byron’s “inner Greek landscape” (a collection of motifs which appear in all of his works from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and which I see epitomized by Manfred) was formed during the initial three months of his Grand Tour. Here, various elements of that “landscape”, both topographical as well as literary and metaphorical, are established. This chapter also surveys Byron’s antiquarianism, scholarly Orientalism (namely his studies in Romaic philology) and his divided attitude to the abstract legacy of Classical Greece and the contemporary Greeks. The last issue was epitomized by the concepts of the “mark of Cain” and the Byronic hero’s tragic love for his other, (apparently a native of Ottoman Greece), which I see as the two leitmotifs of Byron's poetic fictions featuring the Byronic hero (namely from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage until Manfred). The chapter also charts the Platonic notion of eros and a quest for the Kalon, pivotal to Byron's concept of love as absent presence, and key to the Byronic hero's self-torture and self-sufficiency. Chapter Three considers the events preceding and surrounding the composition of Manfred (April 1816 – May 1817), following Byron on his second Continental Tour, where his Greek imaginary was displaced onto the Belgian plains, German hills, Swiss mountains, the city-state of Venice and the Mekhitarist monastery of St Lazarus. This chapter observes the impact of Thomas Taylor's Neo-Platonist treatise, A Dissertation of the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, matched by the impact of Byron’s new friend, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, on Byron's subsequent composition of Manfred. The iv influences of Taylor and Shelley are evident in Byron's respective views of suffering in life as a part of the soul’s philosophical journey, and in his approach to the Promethean myth, Classical democracy, and the Gothic trope, the last serving as an excuse for a series of sceptical discussions culminating with the Diodati contest. Lastly, this chapter traces the influence of Shelley and his friend Peacock on Byron's reassessment of the Promethean and Christian myth during the time of his collaboration with the Mekhitarist monks of St Lazarus, when he was simultaneously writing Manfred and translating the apocryphal words of St Paul the Apostle, which can be read as approving of Manfred’s ultimate self-sufficiency. Following insights from the previous chapters, Chapter Four provides a close reading of Manfred, assessing the play as a form of simultaneous dialogue between Aeschylus, Plato, and Byron’s own hero. While the hero’s musings and monologues are seen as a reiteration of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, and while his notion of a (deflected) eros seems inherited from the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Oriental Tales, the plot of the play seems to follow the course of an initiation rite (theoria) evoked in Plato’s (and Taylor’s) notion of the Eleusinian and Bacchic mysteries. During the course of the play, Manfred is seen as an initiate reclaiming his lost eros, which then enables him to behold the highest good,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies
    Arabic and its Alternatives Christians and Jews in Muslim Societies Editorial Board Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA) Bernard Heyberger (EHESS, Paris, France) VOLUME 5 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cjms Arabic and its Alternatives Religious Minorities and Their Languages in the Emerging Nation States of the Middle East (1920–1950) Edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg Karène Sanchez Summerer Tijmen C. Baarda LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Assyrian School of Mosul, 1920s–1930s; courtesy Dr. Robin Beth Shamuel, Iraq. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murre-van den Berg, H. L. (Hendrika Lena), 1964– illustrator. | Sanchez-Summerer, Karene, editor. | Baarda, Tijmen C., editor. Title: Arabic and its alternatives : religious minorities and their languages in the emerging nation states of the Middle East (1920–1950) / edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Karène Sanchez, Tijmen C. Baarda. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Christians and Jews in Muslim societies, 2212–5523 ; vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Vincentian Missions in the Islamic World
    Vincentian Heritage Journal Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 1 Spring 1984 Vincentian Missions in the Islamic World Charles A. Frazee Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj Recommended Citation Frazee, Charles A. (1984) "Vincentian Missions in the Islamic World," Vincentian Heritage Journal: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol5/iss1/1 This Articles is brought to you for free and open access by the Vincentian Journals and Publications at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vincentian Heritage Journal by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Vincentian Missions in the Islamic World Charles A. Frazee When Saint Vincent de Paul organized the Congrega- tion of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity, one of his aims was to provide a group of men and women who would work in foreign lands on behalf of the Church. He held firm opinions on the need for such a mission since at the very heart of Christ's message was the charge to go to all nations preaching the Gospel. St. Vincent believed that the life of a missionary would win more converts than theological arguments. Hence his instructions to his dis- ciples were always meant to encourage them to lead lives of charity and concern for the poor. This article will describe the extension of Vincent's work into the Islamic world. Specifically, it will touch on the Vincentian experience in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire (including Turkey, the Near East, and Balkan countries), and Persia (Iran).
    [Show full text]
  • GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: a Literary-Biographical-Critical
    1 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: A literary-biographical-critical database 2: by year CODE: From National Library in Taiwan UDD: unpublished doctoral dissertation Books and Articles Referring to Byron, by year 1813-1824: Anon. A Sermon on the Death of Byron, by a Layman —— Lines on the departure of a great poet from this country, 1816 —— An Address to the Rt. Hon. Lord Byron, with an opinion on some of his writings, 1817 —— The radical triumvirate, or, infidel Paine, Lord Byron, and Surgeon Lawrenge … A Letter to John Bull, from a Oxonian resident in London, 1820 —— A letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord Byron, protesting against the immolation of Gray, Cowper and Campbell, at the shrine of Pope, The Pamphleteer Vol 8, 1821 —— Lord Byron’s Plagiarisms, Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1821; Lord Byron Defended from a Charge of Plagiarism, ibid —— Plagiarisms of Lord Byron Detected, Monthly Magazine, August 1821, September 1821 —— A letter of expostulation to Lord Byron, on his present pursuits; with animadversions on his writings and absence from his country in the hour of danger, 1822 —— Uriel, a poetical address to Lord Byron, written on the continent, 1822 —— Lord Byron’s Residence in Greece, Westminster Review July 1824 —— Full Particulars of the much lamented Death of Lord Byron, with a Sketch of his Life, Character and Manners, London 1824 —— Robert Burns and Lord Byron, London Magazine X, August 1824 —— A sermon on the death of Lord Byron, by a Layman, 1824 Barker, Miss. Lines addressed to a noble lord; – his Lordship will know why, – by one of the small fry of the Lakes 1815 Belloc, Louise Swanton.
    [Show full text]
  • Predator Or Prey? Truth and Fiction About the Women in Lord Byron’S Life and Work, with Particular Reference to Don Juan
    Corso di Laurea magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Tesi di Laurea Predator or Prey? Truth and Fiction about the Women in Lord Byron’s Life and Work, with particular reference to Don Juan Relatore Co-relatore Prof. Enrico Palandri Prof. Gregory Dowling Laureanda Caterina Pan Matricola 818923 Anno Accademico 2011 / 2012 To my family Contents Introduction 9 1. The Discovery of Europe through the Grand Tour 12 2. English women 18 2.1. Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron 18 2.2. Annabella Milbanke 22 2.3. Catherine Gordon Byron and Augusta Leigh 29 2.4. Aristocratic ladies – Lady Oxford, Lady Melbourne and Caroline Lamb 38 2.5. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys 46 3. Libertinism in the eighteenth century 52 3.1. Marriage and Libertinism between England, Italy and Europe 52 3.2. The case of Byron 57 4. Italian women 61 4.1. Venice 61 4.2. Comparing Italian and English women 64 4.3. Marianna Segati 69 4.4. Margherita Cogni – La Fornarina 73 4.5. Teresa Gamba, Countess Guiccioli 77 5. Byron’s life and women in Don Juan – the ‘truth in masquerade’ 84 5.1. A comedy, mock-heroic epic and moral autobiographic poem 84 5.2. Venice – Muse and Mask 88 5.3. Truth and Fiction 93 5.4. A “new” Don Juan 97 5.5. Literary tradition VS autobiography – The journey of narrator and protagonist 101 5.6. Literary tradition VS autobiography – The “weaker” sex 106 5.7. Byron’s translation of the women around him in Don Juan 111 5.8.
    [Show full text]
  • Uoteammemberhandbook2011.Pdf
    3 WELCOME! Welcome to Universal Orlando® Resort! You are now a member of an extraordinary team of people whose combined talents make us one of the finest entertainment companies in the world — and a destination that people around the globe desire to visit. We are proud of our accomplishments and are always striving toward our vision of being recognized as the number one entertainment destination in the world! We have developed the most exciting and technologically advanced attractions, we operate the finest shops and restaurants, and we present the most spectacular live entertainment available. Now you are the one who will energize it all… you are the one who will bring it all to life… you are the one who will provide an unforgettably great experience for our guests. Every member of our team is vital to the success of our resort. The friendliness, enthusiasm, and hospitality you extend each day to our guests and each other are critical to our success. You are about to create experiences and thrills that our guests will always remember. This handbook will help you: • learn about our organization; • understand your responsibilities as a Team Member; and • know some of our important policies and procedures. As you learn, please be active and involved. Think about how each idea and each guideline will help us work together to achieve our vision. On behalf of the Universal family, we are proud to welcome you as a new Team Member and to wish you success. We’re glad you’re here! The Team Table of Contents History in the Making ......................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Shelley
    Mary Shelley Early Life Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, the daughter of two prominent radical thinkers of the Enlightenment. Her mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, best known for An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice. Unfortunately, Wollstonecraft died just ten days after her daughter’s birth. Mary was raised by her father and stepmother Mary Jane Clairmont. When she was 16 years old, Mary fell in love with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who visited her father’s house frequently. They eloped to France, as Shelley was already married. They eventually married after two years when Shelley’s wife Harriet committed suicide. The Writing of Frankenstein In the summer of 1816, the Shelleys rented a villa close to that of Lord Byron in Switzerland. The weather was bad (Mary Shelley described it as “wet, ungenial” in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein), due to a 1815 eruption of a volcano in Indonesia that disrupted weather patterns around the world. Stuck inside much of the time, the company, including Byron, the Shelleys, Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s personal physician John Polidori, entertained themselves with reading stories from Fantasmagoriana, a collection of German ghost stories. Inspired by the stories, the group challenged themselves to write their own ghost stories. The only two to complete their stories were Polidori, who published The Vampyre in 1819, and Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein went on to become one of the most popular Gothic tales of all time.
    [Show full text]
  • 08 North Italy 1816
    1 BYRON’S CORRESPONDENCE AND JOURNALS 08: FROM NORTH ITALY, NOVEMBER 1816 Edited by Peter Cochran Work in progress, with frequent updates [indicated]. Letters not in the seventeen main files may be found in those containing the correspondences Byron / Annbella, Byron / Murray, Byron / Hobhouse, Byron / Moore, Byron / Scott, Byron / Kinnaird, Byron / The Shelleys , or Byron / Hoppner . UPDATED November 2010. Abbreviations B.: Byron; Mo: Moore; H.: Hobhouse; K.: Kinnaird; Mu.: Murray; Sh.: Shelley 1922: Lord Byron’s Correspondence Chiefly with Lady Melbourne, Mr Hobhouse, The Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, and P.B.Shelley (2 vols., John Murray 1922). BB: Byron’s Bulldog: The Letters of John Cam Hobhouse to Lord Byron, ed. Peter W.Graham (Columbus Ohio 1984) BLJ: Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Byron’s Letters and Journals . Ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols. London: John Murray 1973–94. Burnett: T.A.J. Burnett, The Rise and Fall of a Regency Dandy , John Murray, 1981. CSS: The Life and Correspondence of the Late Robert Southey , ed. C.C.Southey, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 6 vols 1849-1850. J.W.W.: Selections from the letters of Robert Southey , Ed. John Wood Warter, 4 vols, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856. LJ: The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals . Ed. R. E. Prothero, 6 vols. London: John Murray, 1899-1904. LJM: The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron . Ed. Andrew Nicholson, Liverpool University Press, 2007. NLS: National Library of Scotland. Q: Byron: A Self-Portrait; Letters and Diaries 1798 to 1824 . Ed. Peter Quennell, 2 vols, John Murray, 1950. Ramos: The letters of Robert Southey to John May, 1797 to 1838.
    [Show full text]
  • The True Author of Frankenstein
    Acad. Quest. DOI 10.1007/s12129-018-9731-3 UNORTHODOX IDEAS The True Author of Frankenstein John Lauritsen # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 This year is the bicentennial of Frankenstein, the seminal novel of English Romanticism; it was published anonymously on January 1, 1818. Here I'll describe how I, as an independent scholar, disrupted a cherished feministnarrative.Imade the case that the true author is Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his second wife, Mary. My book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein (Pagan Press, 2007), was not the first to reject Mary Shelley's authorship. Before me there was Phyllis Zimmerman (Shelley's Fiction, 1998) and long before both of us there were Sir Walter Scott (1818) and an anonymous reviewer of Valperga (1824), an historical novel by Mary Shelley. At Harvard I studied English literature and then switched to Social Relations, a radically interdisciplinary department comprising psychology, anthropology, and sociology. After graduation in 1963 I worked as a market research executive, while engaged in political activism (antiwar and gay rights movements) and writing on the side. After retirement I returned to my first love, English literature. It was almost by chance that I came to concentrate on Percy Bysshe Shelley (henceforth, Shelley). One afternoon I was in the New York 42nd Street Public Library, comparing translations of Plato's Symposium. A catalogue card indicated that a translation by Shelley was in the rare books collection. There I read the book, which in 1931 published Shelley’s translation for the first time. John Lauritsen is a retired market research analyst, now a full-time writer and publisher, who lives in Dorchester, Mass.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Documents Relating to Lord Byron's Finances During 1812-18
    1 Some documents relating to Lord Byron’s Finances during 1812-18 1: Byron’s Bank Account with Hoare and Company, 37 Fleet Street 2: Financial material in the John Murray Archive relative to the account with Hoare’s 3: Byron’s account with Hammersley’s Bank, Pall Mall 1: Byron’s Bank Account with Hoare and Company, 37 Fleet Street This is as full an edition of Byron’s first-line bank account during his Years of Fame (1812 - 1816) as I have been able to construct. He had another account with Hammersley’s, for which see below. I think I have been able to identify most of the people and organisations named on the left-hand, debit side of the ledgers. If anyone disagrees with any of my attributions, or has a different interpretation, I should like to hear from them. Hoares date the foundation of their bank from July 5th 1672, when Richard Hoare was granted the Freedom of the Goldsmiths’ Company. In 1673 he took over the goldsmith’s business of his deceased master, and moved it in 1690 to 37 Fleet Street at the Sign of the Golden Bottle, where the bank’s premises have been ever since. All partners in the Bank have been his direct descendants. Hoare was knighted by Queen Anne, and was Lord Mayor of London in 1712. The Bank skilfully avoided disaster when the South Sea Bubble burst in 1721, and Sir Richard’s younger son, also named Richard, was knighted as a reward for his peacekeeping services during the Jacobite uprising of 1745.
    [Show full text]
  • A Legal Analysis on the State of Land Evictions in Uganda
    A LEGAL ANALYSIS ON THE STATE OF LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA BY IRAMA RASHID 1153-01024-02238 A RESEARCH REPORT SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF LAW IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF A BACHELORS DEGREE IN LAW OF KAMPALA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY JUNE, 2019 DECLARATION I, Irama Rashid Reg. No. 1153-01024-02238 declare to the best of my knowledge that this research report is truly my original and has not been submitted in the fulfillment for any award of a degree in any other Institution of Higher Learning or University, so it is entirely out of my own efforts. -n;; Signature ... ~ • Date .. ./ .'r.. .. ..~f.? . .: .. ?.-!> 1 9 • IRAMA RASHID APPROVAL This is to certify that this research report is done under my supervision and it is now ready for submission to the school of Law, Kampala International University with my approval. ..:u5ja.£;{a /9 Signature.~ Date .............................. !.. MR. AFUNADUULA ISAAC ii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my ailing father Mr. Haruna Taban who has injected numerous resources towards this particular undettaking. Admittedly, this course has enriched my experience and understanding, and you have done an incredible job. You have exactly done what a loving parent can ever do to his son. I wish to firmly state that you have displayed a true quality of fatherhood by starting a legacy to this chosen generation. The civilized world now sees the prudence of a father in you. It was not easy to acquire this legal personality amidst serious financial hiccups; but you hoped beyond pain and found this answer by your design rather than by accident.
    [Show full text]
  • Vampyre Gone Wild
    vampyre gone wild Lord Ruthven Strikes Again FSU College of Law 5th Annual Civil Mock Trial Competition B y r o n v . V a m p y r e H o l d i n g C o . , L L C , a n d D r . P o l i d o r i March 3-5, 2017 Table of Contents Acknowledgment ....................................................................................................................... 1 Rules .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Competition Agenda ............................................................................................................... 10 College of Law Map ................................................................................................................ 11 Advocacy Center Floor Plans ................................................................................................ 12 Scoresheet ................................................................................................................................. 13 Complaint ................................................................................................................................. 14 Answer ...................................................................................................................................... 21 Reply ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Depositions Clairmont .....................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Science Fiction in a Gothic Scaffold: a Reading of Mary Shelley's
    A Science Fiction in a Gothic Scaffold: a Reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Zinia Mitra Nakshalbari College, Darjeeling, India Abstract Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is a unique blend of two genres: Gothic and science fiction. While it follows the gothic convention of tale within tales, its epistolary framework and keeps intact its unrestrained lengthy articulations, it explores at the same time the innovative marvels of modern science. The fire that Prometheus stole form Zeus to help mankind is ingeniously replaced in the novel by the spark of electricity. The novel also puts to question some traditional social assumptions. [Keywords: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, Gothic, monster] While Epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be the primal text of science fiction many consider Frankenstein to be the first science fiction in English (1818). Frankenstein is a science fiction. It is also a gothic novel. The anecdote of the cold and wet summer of Geneva is well known, where simply to assuage the monotony, Lord Byron had proposed that each present should write a ghost story. Amongst those present were Mary and Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont (Mary's stepsister) and Lord Byron along with his physician friend, Joseph Pollidori. All had undertaken the task but were soon wearied of it. Mary was the only person to have written a complete novel. In her preface to 1831 edition Mary speaks of an awful dream that led to the conception of Frankenstein: When I place[d] my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.
    [Show full text]