The Neglected Shelley

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Neglected Shelley THE NEGLECTED SHELLEY Proof Copy The Neglected Shelley.indb 1 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM The Nineteenth Century Series General Editors’ Preface The aim of the series is to reflect, develop and extend the great burgeoning of interest in the nineteenth century that has been an inevitable feature of recent years, as that former epoch has come more sharply into focus as a locus for our understanding not only of the past but of the contours of our modernity. It centres primarily upon major authors and subjects within Romantic and Victorian literature. It also includes studies of other British writers and issues, where these are matters of current debate: for example, biography and autobiography, journalism, periodical literature, travel writing, book production, gender, non-canonical writing. We are dedicated principally to publishing original monographs and symposia; our policy is to embrace a broad scope in chronology, approach and range of concern, and both to recognize and cut innovatively across such parameters as those suggested by the designations ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’. We welcome new ideas and theories, while valuing traditional scholarship. It is hoped that the world which predates yet so forcibly predicts and engages our own will emerge in parts, in the wider sweep, and in the lively streams of disputation and change that are so manifest an aspect of its intellectual, artistic and social landscape. Vincent Newey Joanne Shattock University of Leicester Proof Copy The Neglected Shelley.indb 2 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM The Neglected Shelley Edited by AlAN M. WEINBERg University of South Africa, RSA and TIMoThy WEBB University of Bristol, UK Proof Copy The Neglected Shelley.indb 3 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM © Alan M. Weinberg, Timothy Webb and the contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, gU9 7PT USA England www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: The Neglected Shelley / edited by Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. pages cm. — (The nineteenth century series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-6564-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4724-6565-8 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-4724-6566-5 (epub) 1. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Criticism and interpretation. I. Weinberg, Alan M. (Alan Mendel) editor. II. Webb, Timothy, editor. PR5438.N35 2015 821’.7—dc23 2015015369 ISBN: 9781472465641 (hbk) ISBN: 9781472465658 (ebk – PDF) ISBN: 9781472465665Proof (ebk – ePUB) Copy Printed in the United Kingdom by henry ling limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1hD The Neglected Shelley.indb 4 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM To the memory of Geoffrey Matthews, whose lifelong and passionate dedication to the better understanding of Shelley has paved the way for many future scholars and researchers. Proof Copy The Neglected Shelley.indb 5 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM The Neglected Shelley.indb 6 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Contents 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 Illustration ix 5 6 Notes on Contributors xi 6 7 Acknowledgments xv 7 8 List of Abbreviations xvii 8 9 Editorial Note xix 9 10 10 11 Introduction 1 11 12 Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg 12 13 13 14 1 An Uncelebrated Facility: The Achievement of Shelley’s letters 13 14 15 Timothy Webb 15 16 2 Symmetrical Forms and Infuriate Paroxysms: observing the Body in 16 17 Percy Shelley’s gothic Fiction 35 17 18 Diego Saglia 18 19 19 3 Harps, heroes and yelling Vampires: The 1810 Poetry Collections 51 20 20 David Duff 21 21 22 4 The Notes to Queen Mab and Shelley’s Spinozism 77 22 23 Timothy Morton 23 24 5 ‘his left hand held the lyre’: Shelley’s Narrative Fiction Fragments 95 24 25 Stephen C. Behrendt 25 26 26 27 6 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Text(s) in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 27 28 Frankenstein 11728 29 Charles E. Robinson 29 30 7 Shelley’s Second Kingdom: Rosalind and Helen and ‘Mazenghi’ 137 30 31 Jack Donovan 31 32 32 8 Shelley’s Work in Progress: ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ and the 33 33 Unfinished Draft of ‘Prince Athanase’ 157 34 34 Alan M. Weinberg 35 35 36 9 Satyr Play in a Radical Vein: Shelley’s ‘Cyclops’ 177 36 37 MariaProof Schoina Copy 37 38 10 The Sensitive-Plant and the Poetry of Irresponsibility 199 38 39 39 Richard Cronin 40 40 41 11 ‘Infinitely comical’: Italianizing the ‘hymn to Mercury’ 215 41 42 Timothy Webb 42 43 43 44 44 The Neglected Shelley.indb 7 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM viii The Neglected Shelley 12 ‘Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream’: Shelley’s Art of Ambivalence in 1 1 Hellas 239 2 2 Michael O’Neill 3 3 4 13 Shelley, Jews and the land of Promise 261 4 5 Nora Crook 5 6 14 Shelley’s Italian Verse Fragments: Exploring the Notebook Drafts 281 6 7 7 Alan M. Weinberg 8 8 9 Bibliography 307 9 10 Index 329 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44 The Neglected Shelley.indb 8 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Illustration 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 3.1 Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire. 1810. Page 11. Text, 5 6 with pencil annotation probably by Shelley. The Carl h. 6 7 Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and his Circle, The New 7 8 York Public library, Astor, lenox and Tilden Foundations. 8 9 9 Pforz 557l 04 53 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44 The Neglected Shelley.indb 9 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM Proof Copy 02.07.2008 The Neglected Shelley.indb 10 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Notes on Contributors 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 Stephen C. Behrendt is george holmes Distinguished University Professor 5 6 of English at the University of Nebraska. Among his books are Shelley and His 6 7 Audiences (1989), Reading William Blake (1992), Royal Mourning and Regency 7 8 Culture (1997), and British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing Community 8 9 (2009), as well as several collections of original poetry, including most recently 9 10 Refractions (2014). he is also the author of many interdisciplinary essays and 10 11 articles on Romantic-era literature, art and culture, and on the relations among the 11 12 arts generally. 12 13 13 14 Richard Cronin is Emeritus Professor at the University of glasgow. he has 14 15 published widely on nineteenth-century literature. his most recent books are 15 16 Romantic Victorians: English Literature 1824–1840 (2002), Paper Pellets: British 16 17 Literary Culture after Waterloo (2010), and Reading Victorian Poetry (2012). 17 18 With Dorothy McMillan he edited Emma for the Cambridge Edition of the Works 18 19 of Jane Austen (2013), and works of Robert Browning in the oxford Twenty-First 19 20 Century Author series (2015). 20 21 21 22 Nora Crook is Professor Emerita of English at Anglia Ruskin University, 22 23 Cambridge. She has published widely on both Shelleys. She has edited two volumes 23 24 of the Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, and 12 volumes (as general Editor) of the 24 25 novels and works of Mary Shelley. She is a co-general editor of The Complete 25 26 Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and editor of the forthcoming Volume VII, which 26 27 will consist chiefly of Shelley’s posthumous poems. 27 28 28 29 Jack Donovan was formerly Reader in English at the University of york. he 29 30 was one of the editors of The Poems of Shelley, Volumes 2 (2000), 3 (2011) and 4 30 31 (2013) in the series longman Annotated English Poets and is currently part of the 31 32 editorial team preparing Volume 5. 32 33 33 34 David Duff is Professor in Romanticism at Queen Mary University of london. 34 35 his previous work on Shelley includes Romance and Revolution: Shelley and 35 36 the Politics of a Genre (1994), and a number of essays on Shelley’s early poetry 36 37 publishedProof in The Wordsworth Circle, The OxfordCopy Handbook of Percy Bysshe 37 38 Shelley (2012) and The Unfamiliar Shelley (2009). he is author of the award- 38 39 winning Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (2009), co-editor of Scotland, 39 40 Ireland, and the Romantic Aesthetic (2007) and editor of The Oxford Handbook 40 41 of British Romanticism (2016).
Recommended publications
  • The Necessity of Atheism Shelley, Percy Bysshe
    The Necessity of Atheism Shelley, Percy Bysshe Published: 1811 Categorie(s): Non-Fiction, Religion Source: Wikisource http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Neces- sity_of_Atheism_(Shelley) 1 About Shelley: Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. A rad- ical in his poetry and his political and social views, fame eluded him during his lifetime, but recognition grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of vision- ary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Shelley's early profession of athe- ism (in the tract "The Necessity of Atheism") led to his expul- sion from Oxford and branded him a radical agitator and thinker, setting an early pattern of marginalisation and ostra- cism from the intellectual and political circles of his time. His close circle of admirers, however, included some progressive thinkers of the day, including his future father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output remained steady throughout his life, most pub- lishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of be- ing arrested themselves for blasphemy or sedition. Shelley did not live to see success and influence, although these reach down to the present day not only in literature, but in major movements in social and political thought. Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
    [Show full text]
  • Premature and Dissolving Endings in Shelley's Poetry Author[S]: Julia Tejblum Source: Moveabletype, Vol
    Article: The Fisher, The Spear, and the Fortunate Fish: Premature and Dissolving Endings in Shelley's Poetry Author[s]: Julia Tejblum Source: MoveableType, Vol. 7, ‘Intersections’ (2014) DOI: 10.14324/111.1755-4527.059 MoveableType is a Graduate, Peer-Reviewed Journal based in the Department of English at UCL. © 2014 Julia Tejblum. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The Fisher, the Spear, and the Fortunate Fish: Premature and Dissolving Endings in Shelley’s Poetry Walter Benjamin famously o served that our interest in narrative is bound up not only with our in" terest in life, but, more tellingly, with our interest in death: we hope to learn something of the meaning of our o!n lives from the lives of fctional chara$ters, but mu$h of that meaning is revealed to us only through our witnessing the chara$ter’s death% The revelation of meaning through death, which Ben" jamin likens to cat$hing the heat of a fame, is impossi le without fction, sin$e none of us survives our o!n death and, therefore, none can ta&e part in the revelation unless it is at the e(pense of another: )What dra!s the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads a out%*+ But Benjamin’s o servations go beyond the sphere of the novel; a curiosity a out any narrative ending is a curiosity
    [Show full text]
  • Select Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
    ENGLISH CLÀSSICS The vignette, representing Shelleÿs house at Great Mar­ lou) before the late alterations, is /ro m a water- colour drawing by Dina Williams, daughter of Shelleÿs friend Edward Williams, given to the E ditor by / . Bertrand Payne, Esq., and probably made about 1840. SELECT LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD GARNETT NEW YORK D.APPLETON AND COMPANY X, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET MDCCCLXXXIII INTRODUCTION T he publication of a book in the series of which this little volume forms part, implies a claim on its behalf to a perfe&ion of form, as well as an attradiveness of subjeâ:, entitling it to the rank of a recognised English classic. This pretensión can rarely be advanced in favour of familiar letters, written in haste for the information or entertain­ ment of private friends. Such letters are frequently among the most delightful of literary compositions, but the stamp of absolute literary perfe&ion is rarely impressed upon them. The exceptions to this rule, in English literature at least, occur principally in the epistolary litera­ ture of the eighteenth century. Pope and Gray, artificial in their poetry, were not less artificial in genius to Cowper and Gray ; but would their un- their correspondence ; but while in the former premeditated utterances, from a literary point of department of composition they strove to display view, compare with the artifice of their prede­ their art, in the latter their no less successful cessors? The answer is not doubtful. Byron, endeavour was to conceal it. Together with Scott, and Kcats are excellent letter-writers, but Cowper and Walpole, they achieved the feat of their letters are far from possessing the classical imparting a literary value to ordinary topics by impress which they communicated to their poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • From Poet to Poet Or Shelley's Inconsistencies in Keats's Panegyric
    From Poet to Poet or Shelley’s Inconsistencies in Keats’s Panegyric: Adonais as an Autobiographical Work of Art by Caroline Bertonèche (Paris 3) Adonais, in short, is such an elegy as poet might be expected to write upon poet. The author has had before him his recollections of Lycidas, of Moschus and Bion, and of the doctrines of Plato; and in the stanza of the most poetical of poets, Spenser, has brought his own genius, in all its ethereal beauty, to lead a pomp of Loves, Graces, and Intelligences, in honour of the departed. (Leigh Hunt, “Unsigned Review of Adonais”, The Examiner, 7 juillet 1822)1 I have engaged these last days in composing a poem on the death of John Keats, which will shortly be finished; and I anticipate the pleasure of reading it to you, as some of the very few persons who will be interested in it and understand it. It is a highly wrought piece of art, perhaps better in point of composition than anything I have written. (Lettre de Shelley à John et Maria Gisborne, 5 juin 1821, Complete Works, X 270) When Shelley said of Adonais, not long after its completion, that it was its most accomplished piece of art, “better in point of composition than anything [he] ha[d] written” while mentioning, in his Preface, the “feeble tribute of applause” (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose 392) it nonetheless represents, he does not to seem to want to hide his own sense of personal satisfaction, nor does he fail to confess certain obvious limitations in his work as a Romantic elegist.
    [Show full text]
  • The Skeptical Gothic in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0408-5 OPEN Anatomy of tragedy: the skeptical gothic in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ✉ Veronika Ruttkay 1 ABSTRACT Combining philosophical and literary perspectives, this paper argues that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is informed by a skeptical problematic that may be traced back to the work of the young David Hume. As the foundational text on romantic monstrosity, Fran- kenstein 1234567890():,; has been studied from various critical angles, including that of Humean skepticism by Sarah Tindal Kareem (Eighteenth-century fiction and the reinvention of wonder. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) and Monique Morgan (Romant Net 44, doi:10.7202/ 013998ar, 2006). However, the striking connections with Hume’s Treatise have not been fully explored. The paper begins by comparing the three narrators of Frankenstein with three figures appearing in Hume’s Conclusion to Book I: the anatomist, the explorer, and the monster. It proceeds by looking at the hybrid “anatomies” offered by Hume and Shelley, suggesting that Frankenstein might be regarded as a tragic re-enactment and radicalization of Hume’s skeptical impasse. Whereas Hume alerted his readers to the dangers of a thor- oughgoing skepticism only to steer his argument in a new direction, Shelley shows those dangers realized in the “catastrophe” of the Monster’s birth. While Hume had called attention to the impossibility of conducting strictly scientific experiments on “moral subjects”, Shelley devises a counterfactual plot and a multi-layered narrative structure in order to explore that very impossibility. Interpreting Frankenstein as an instance of the “skeptical gothic”, I suggest that both the monster and the scientist (Victor) share some traits with Hume’s radically skeptical philosopher, including a tendency to give up responsibility for what Stanley Cavell (The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy.
    [Show full text]
  • National Trauma and Romantic Illusions in Percy Shelley's the Cenci
    humanities Article National Trauma and Romantic Illusions in Percy Shelley’s The Cenci Lisa Kasmer Department of English, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, USA; [email protected] Received: 18 March 2019; Accepted: 8 May 2019; Published: 14 May 2019 Abstract: Percy Shelley responded to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre by declaring the government’s response “a bloody murderous oppression.” As Shelley’s language suggests, this was a seminal event in the socially conscious life of the poet. Thereafter, Shelley devoted much of his writing to delineating the sociopolitical milieu of 1819 in political and confrontational works, including The Cenci, a verse drama that I argue portrays the coercive violence implicit in nationalism, or, as I term it, national trauma. In displaying the historical Roman Cenci family in starkly vituperous manner, that is, Shelley reveals his drive to speak to the historical moment, as he creates parallels between the tyranny that the Roman pater familias exhibits toward his family and the repression occurring during the time of emergent nationhood in Hanoverian England, which numerous scholars have addressed. While scholars have noted discrete acts of trauma in The Cenci and other Romantic works, there has been little sustained criticism from the theoretical point of view of trauma theory, which inhabits the intersections of history, cultural memory, and trauma, and which I explore as national trauma. Through The Cenci, Shelley implies that national trauma inheres within British nationhood in the multiple traumas of tyrannical rule, shored up by the nation’s cultural memory and history, instantiated in oppressive ancestral order and patrilineage. Viewing The Cenci from the perspective of national trauma, however, I conclude that Shelley’s revulsion at coercive governance and nationalism loses itself in the contemplation of the beautiful pathos of the effects of national trauma witnessed in Beatrice, as he instead turns to a more traditional national narrative.
    [Show full text]
  • Rule Breaches in NUS Referendum Spark Controversy
    !ZPSLOPVTFt ZPSLOPVTFt @yorknouse twww.nouse.co.uk Meet the Ready for the Ball? new socs Get inspired for the Summer Ball with The Shoot M.10 From drones to Game of Thrones M.4 Shortlisted for Guardian Student Publication of the Year 2015 Est. 1964 Sponsored by Nouse Tuesday 07 June 2016 Rule breaches in NUS Referendum spark controversy The NUS has come under fire for 3rd party campaigning student members.” Amy Gibbons and Ben Rowden Campaigners on both sides DEP EDITOR AND NEWS EDITOR have taken starkly opposing views on the matter, with ambiguity about whether the email counted as ‘third party campaigning’ proving a con- THE NATIONAL UNION of Stu- tentious issue. Such ambiguity has dents has been accused of unau- left questions open as to how clearly thorised third party campaigning rules have been established between in the NUS Referendum at York stakeholders in the campaign. following an email that was sent out Lucas North, on behalf of ‘York to NUS Extra customers last week, Says Yes to NUS’, told Nouse: “‘Yes urging them to vote Remain. to NUS’ do not consider the email The email, which was sent on sent to students a breach of the Wednesday, listed eight reasons campaign rules, this is because they why customers should vote to re- are an external party who are not main in the NUS, in addition to the bound by the rules, and students benefits assumed from owning an who received it opted in to receiving NUS Extra card. communication from NUS Extra. It read: “NUS is more than just “To my understanding, person- a discount card, it is an organisation ally, both the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ cam- dedicated to making a better life for paigns were made aware of the cam- all students [...] Make sure you vote paign rules.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogue of the Library and Autographs of William F. Johnson
    * Copy / I - V CATALD DUE 30 X Ilibr&ry • &nd - OF WILLIAM F. JOHNSON, ESQ., w OK BOSTON, MASS. fVERY VALUABLE and Interesting Collection of English and American Literature comprising, under the title Americana, a num¬ ber of scarce works by the Mathers, Eliot and other authors of their day ; in General Literature, many Standard and Popular Works of Biography, History and Romance, and worthy of especial notice and attention, a Collection of FIRST EDITIONS of REMARKABLE INTEREST AND VALUE BY REASON OF BOTH RARITY AND BEAUTY OF CONDITION, including the most desired specimens of the works of Coleridge, Hunt, Lamb, Keats, Shelley, Thackeray, Browning, Bry¬ ant, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow and others. Also to be mentioned a charming lot of CRUIKSH ANKIANA, and books illustrated by Leech and Rowlandson. In addition to all the book treasures there are Specimen Autographs of the best known and honored English and American Authors, Statesmen and others, many of them particularly desirable for condition or interesting con¬ tents. TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION Monday, Tuesday, "Wednesday and Thursday, JANUARY 2T—30, 1890, BANQS & 60.,,. , * i A ■» 1 > > > • «. it1 > » i ) >) > ) ) > 5 > 1 J > * ) » > 739 & 741 Broadway, New York. 7 ~ % > n > > ) t> ) >7 > SALE TO BEGIN AT 3 O’CLOCK!’ ' > 7 > ' 7 ' > > 7 ) 7 *7 >v > ) , 7 {y Buyers wl~io cannot attend tloe sale me\y have pcir- chases made to tlieir order toy ttie Auctioneers. •* \ in 3 7 . '" i 'O'b ■ 9 c 1 ( f' * ( 0 « C. < C I < < < I / I , < C l < C » c 1 « l ( 1C. C f «. < « c c c i r < < < < 6 < C < < C \ ( < « ( V ( c C ( < < < < C C C t C.
    [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]
  • Categorizing Humans, Animals, and Machines in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Senior Honors Projects Honors Program at the University of Rhode Island 2009 Categorizing Humans, Animals, and Machines in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Martha Bellows University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/srhonorsprog Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Bellows, Martha, "Categorizing Humans, Animals, and Machines in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein" (2009). Senior Honors Projects. Paper 129. http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/srhonorsprog/129http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/srhonorsprog/129 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors Program at the University of Rhode Island at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Martha Bellows Major: English and Spanish Email: [email protected] Title of Project: Categorizing Humans, Animals, and Machines in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Galen Johnson Abstract From Plato to Descartes and Kant and now to modern day, there is a general idea that pervades Western society. This idea is about the uniqueness and superiority of the human being. We are rational and conscious beings that apparently stand alone in the world, separated intellectually from animals and biologically from machines. The relationship between humans, animals, and machines is a tumultuous one and it is not easily definable. For many classical philosophers, this relationship has always been a hierarchy. Humans are on the top and animals and machines fall somewhere below. These beliefs have created a distinct category for the three terms that leaves no room for overlap.
    [Show full text]
  • Frankenstein's Theatrical Doppelgänger
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2013-08-27 From Prometheus to Presumption: Frankenstein's Theatrical Doppelgänger Reid, Brittany Lee Alexandra Reid, B. L. (2013). From Prometheus to Presumption: Frankenstein's Theatrical Doppelgänger (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26236 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/894 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY From Prometheus to Presumption: Frankenstein’s Theatrical Doppelgänger by Brittany Reid A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA AUGUST, 2013 © Brittany Reid 2013 ii Abstract This thesis examines the Doppelgänger relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, as it is characterized through both Frankenstein and its first theatrical adaptation. With a specific focus on Richard Brinsley Peake’s 1823 gothic melodrama, Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein I unpack how the novel’s cross-medium adaptation leads to a changed conception of the relationship of its central characters. In Frankenstein, Victor is the focal figure and acts as the Creature’s dominant counterpart. However, the characters’ cross-medium adaptation from page to stage inverts this Doppelgänger relationship from Shelley’s initial conception in the novel.
    [Show full text]
  • The Thanatic Corporeality of Edward Onslow Ford's Shelley Memorial
    Chapter 4 of David J. Getsy, Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877-1905 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), revised and expanded from an article of the same title published in Visual Culture in Britain 3.1 (April 2002): 53-76 4 "Hard Realism": The Thanatic Corporeality of Edward Onslow Ford's Shelley Memorial Some have skeletons in their closets; Oxford has a corpse. Since its unveiling in 1893, Edward Onslow Ford's memorial to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley has been a disconcerting presence at University College (figs. 71, 77-81). Often met with derision, the Shelley Memorial has suf­ fered perennial undergraduate pranks, vandalism, and recurring attempts to bury - or at least move - this uneasy and awkward body. In art-historical accounts of the period, the work has been quietly passed over despite its importance to late Victorian sculpture and criticism.' All of this squeamishness, however, is precisely the point. Almost a century before the corpse would be explored by sculptors like Paul Thek, Robert Gober, or Marc Quinn Edward Onslow Ford brought the viewer face to face with thanatic corporeality. Ford used the commission for the ShelleyMemorial to formulate a polemical contribution to the on-going debates about the propriety and potential of sculptural verisimilitude. He employed the corpse as the embodiment of realism itself and made the figure of Shelley its poetic allegory. In this work he posited a highly self-conscious and self-reflexive articulation of verisimilitude and its overlap with the materiality of the sculptural object. Despite the fact that he would become one of the pillars of the sculptural renaissance in the 1880s and 1890s, Ford had little of the formal training in sculpture from which his col­ leagues benefited.
    [Show full text]