The Origins and Genesis of Shelley's Frankenstein And
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FACULTAD de FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS DEPARTAMENTO de FILOLOGÍA INGLESA Grado en Estudios Ingleses TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO “UNDEAD MONSTERS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE”: THE ORIGINS AND GENESIS OF SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND POLIDORI’S THE VAMPYRE Laura Portela Martín Tutor: Berta Cano Echevarría Curso 2017-2018 ABSTRACT It was one of those cold summer nights of 1816 in Lake Geneva that marked the birth of two of the great myths that nurture our popular culture: Frankenstein and the vampire. It was Byron’s ghost story-telling challenge what awakened the imagination of two strangers: William Polidori and Mary Shelley. The first with The Vampyre and the second with Frankenstein achieved the milestone of having presence to this day, but how did these monsters take shape? Like any story, it all started before. Much had to do that both were born during the Romanticism, considered the time of explosion of the imagination, of the rise of sciences, and of recovery of mythology and folklore. The purpose of this paper is to show how the romantic ideas, as well as the authors’ personal experiences, were the responsible of the genesis of these creatures, and to reflect through a comparison that these monsters are more similar than what people think. Keywords: Frankenstein, vampire, science, folklore, John Polidori, Mary Shelley Fue una de esas frías noches del verano de 1816 en Lake Geneva la que marco el nacimiento de dos de los grandes mitos que alimentan nuestra cultura popular: Frankenstein y el vampiro. Sería la proposición de Byron de escribir un cuento de terror lo que despertó la imaginación de dos desconocidos: William Polidori y Mary Shelley. El primero con “The Vampyre” y la segunda con “Frankenstein” consiguieron el hito de estar presentes hasta nuestros días, pero ¿cómo se gestaron estos monstruos? Como cualquier historia, todo empezó antes. Mucho tuvo que ver que las historias nacieran durante el Romanticismo, época de explosión de la imaginación, de auge de las ciencias, y de recuperación de la mitología y folklore. El propósito de este trabajo es plasmar como las ideas románticas, así como las propias experiencias de los autores, fueron las que realmente provocaron el génesis de estas criaturas, y reflejar a través de una comparación que estos monstruos se parecen más de lo que creemos. Palabras clave: Frankenstein, vampiro, ciencia, folclore, John Polidori, Mary Shelley “UNDEAD MONSTERS OF THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE”: THE ORIGINS AND GENESIS OF SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND POLIDORI’S THE VAMPYRE Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. Contextualization …………………………………………………………………... 3 1.1. Cultural and Intellectual context: The Romanticism and the developments in the scientific field …………………………………………………………………. 3 2. Theoretical Frame: The boundaries between life and death ……………………….. 5 2.1.1. Sciences of Life: The artificial life ………………………………...…..... 5 2.1.2. Mythology and Folklore………………………………………………… 7 3. Origins of SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN AND POLIDORI’S THE VAMPIRE: Summer of 1916 at Geneva ……………………………………………………….. 10 4. Genesis of the character of Frankenstein and his monster …………………..……. 12 5. Genesis of Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre ………………………………………… 18 6. Frankenstein versus The Vampyre ………………………………………….…….. 22 6.1. Examination of the Scientific Innovation …………………………………….. 22 6.2. The sexualization of the vampire ……………………………………………... 23 6.3. Comparison between both monsters ………………………………………….. 25 7. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………….. 30 8. List of works cited ……………………………………………………………..….. 32 INTRODUCTION Monsters have been with us always since ancient times. They have become an important part of the horror and science fiction literature, but their relevance did not arrive until the Romantic period, when the most important faculty of the human mind was the imagination. Two of the romantic figures who wrote about supernatural creatures were Mary Shelley and John Polidori, authors of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus and The Vampyre respectively. Their undead monsters created simultaneously during the summer of 1816 in Lake Geneva supposed the creation of two major mythic figures that would have not only a great impact during the 19th century, but until nowadays. Moreover, they were not created simply through an act of imagination, but they are based in some of the new ideas of the period, such as the sciences, and the ancient mythology and folklore previously repudiated in the Enlightenment. Nowadays, the foundation that gave rise to both myths has been almost forgotten. Whereas Dr. Frankenstein and her unnamed creation “have been mythically woven into one by the modern popular mind” (Hindle 11), the figure of Lord Ruthven has been left behind with the pass of time, being substituted by figures like Dracula or the contemporary vampire Edward Cullen. In concordance with the changes in the society, these characters have been adapted to the necessities of the time, leaving behind the circumstances that gave birth to these undead monsters. In this way, the purpose of the paper is to present an analysis about the Romantic ideas and personal issues that prompted the genesis of both Dr. Frankenstein and his creature and Lord Ruthven individually as well as a comparison between both to conclude they are not so different as people generally think. 1 1. Contextualization 1.1. Cultural and Intellectual context: The Romanticism and the developments in the scientific field. Although the beginning of Romanticism dates from the publication of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in 1790, it will be in the late 1810s and the 1820s when the real development and birth of the Romantic fiction in literature will be seen. This fiction is considered as “most ‘romantic’ in the usual sense of that word in that time – ‘fantastic, extravagant, irrational’ – rejecting the domestic, the familiar, the rational, and the realistic that we have noted as a major strain of fiction in the 1790s and 1800s” (Kelly 184). In general terms, during the first half of the 19th century, Romanticism influenced almost every aspect of society to some degree. One of the main premises of Romanticism is that the artist is not characterized by the objectivity and rationality of the Enlightenment but, instead, the artist will be subjective, individualized through the use of his own imagination The Romantic period saw “various attempts to revive the spiritual aspects of life” which took the form of calls for a return to nature where the irrational and strange takes places (Murray 692). These attempts set the path to the new interest in madness and the irrational or supernatural which is reflected in the presentation of some artistic forms, such as the architectural genre of the Gothic as well as the fascination with folk tales and Medieval fantasies” (Murray 692). At the same time, “the period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been named by some historians of science “the second Scientific Revolution” (Golinski 527). Science proper emerges as separate from nature. “In fact, the period sees the birth of practically all the academic and scientific disciplines […]” (Murray 792). However, the new scientific ideas were not only a matter of the scientists properly, but these new ideas also had a great impact in the general literary culture, such as in periodicals and novels addressed to middle-class educated readers. One of those explorations will be related with the idea of vitality –the idea of life as power – which “was, to be sure, the distinguished feature, of Romantic aesthetics” (Gigante 3). The study of the properties and components of the living beings became a subject of debate from 1760 that derived in a 19th century fight between the Vitalists and the Materialists to impose their theory about life. 3 Since the development and study of science was not firmly established until the second half of the 18th century, there was not a clear frontier between the different branches of science. For this reason, most of the scientists were specialized in various areas of knowledge, so that “taking a wide range was an acceptable and expected thing to do” (Knight n.p.). Towards the end of the Romantic period, in the 1830s, and after several decades fighting against the intellectual legacy inherited from the Enlightenment, “the public dimensions of scientific activity had changed significantly from the situation prevailing in the eighteenth century” (Golinski 529). Furthermore, the understanding of the natural and human worlds would change for the European population and, consequently, transformed the European mode of acting in those fields (Fulford et al. 5). 4 2. Theoretical Frame: The boundaries between life and death. Generally, “undead” refers to beings technically dead but still animated, who continue exhibiting some characteristics of the living beings.1 The ideas of life and death and the limits between both were on the agenda during the Romantic period. In order to give explanation to these phenomena, there were two paths: the sciences of life, which would explain through experiments the limits between life and death, and the folklore and mythology, a source of information coming from stories full of superstition and supernatural elements from Medieval and ancient times recovered during the Romanticism. 2.1. Sciences of Life: The artificial life The expansion and popularization of the term “biology” around the turn of the eighteenth century meant the support for a new branch of the life sciences, the artificial science of life,