Mary Shelley and Gender Construction 2019
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The Last Man"
W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2016 Renegotiating the Apocalypse: Mary Shelley’s "The Last Man" Kathryn Joan Darling College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Darling, Kathryn Joan, "Renegotiating the Apocalypse: Mary Shelley’s "The Last Man"" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 908. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/908 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 The apocalypse has been written about as many times as it hasn’t taken place, and imagined ever since creation mythologies logically mandated destructive counterparts. Interest in the apocalypse never seems to fade, but what does change is what form that apocalypse is thought to take, and the ever-keen question of what comes after. The most classic Western version of the apocalypse, the millennial Judgement Day based on Revelation – an absolute event encompassing all of humankind – has given way in recent decades to speculation about political dystopias following catastrophic war or ecological disaster, and how the remnants of mankind claw tooth-and-nail for survival in the aftermath. Desolate landscapes populated by cannibals or supernatural creatures produce the awe that sublime imagery, like in the paintings of John Martin, once inspired. The Byronic hero reincarnates in an extreme version as the apocalyptic wanderer trapped in and traversing a ruined world, searching for some solace in the dust. -
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. -
Frankenstein, Matilda, and the Legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft
2 PAMELA CLEMIT Frankenstein, Matilda, and the legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft [My mother’s] greatness of soul & my father high talents have perpetually reminded me that I ought to degenerate as little as I could from those from whom I derived my being . my chief merit must always be derived, first from the glory these wonderful beings have shed [?around] me, & then for the enthusiasm I have for excellence & the ardent admiration I feel for those who sacrifice themselves for the public good. (L ii 4) In this letter of September 1827 to Frances Wright, the Scottish-born author and social reformer, Mary Shelley reveals just how much she felt her life and thought to be shaped by the social and political ideals of her parents, William Godwin, the leading radical philosopher of the 1790s, and his wife, the proto-feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The multiple liter- ary, political, and philosophical influences of Godwin and Wollstonecraft may be traced in all six of Mary Shelley’s full-length novels, as well as in her tales, biographies, essays, and other shorter writings. Yet while she con- sistently wrote within the framework established by her parents’ concerns, she was no mere imitator of their works. Writing with an awareness of how French revolutionary politics had unfolded through the Napoleonic era, Mary Shelley extends and reformulates the many-sided legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft in extreme, imaginatively arresting ways. Those legacies received their most searching reappraisal in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Shelley’s remarkable first novel, and were re- examined a year later in Matilda, a novella telling the story of incestuous love between father and daughter, which, though it remained unpublished until 1959, has now become one of her best-known works. -
The Last Man Ebook
THE LAST MAN PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Mary Shelley,Pamela Bickley,Dr. Keith Carabine | 432 pages | 05 Nov 2004 | Wordsworth Editions Ltd | 9781840224030 | English | Herts, United Kingdom The Last Man PDF Book Mary Shelley used this term in a letter of 3 October Director: Robert Sparr. Clear your history. USA Today. April 5, Release Dates. Legendas - Danilo Carvalho. Retrieved July 11, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved September 26, Add the first question. For other uses, see The Last Man disambiguation. Genres: Western. Y: The Last Man at Wikipedia's sister projects. The series is collected in trade paperbacks. But one warning, if you are that fat, balding dufus, you will be miserable through out the film. After initially celebrating their reconnection, Yorick realizes he actually loves Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, and the belief that, barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary happening, humanity is doomed to extinction. Adrian raises a military force against them and ultimately is able to resolve the situation peacefully. Plot Summary. His wife and kids were killed by soldiers in the Indian wars. Edit page. Arriving in Athens , Lionel learns that Raymond had been captured by the Ottomans , and negotiates his return to Greece. Fearing that is the last human left on Earth, Lionel follows the Apennine Mountains to Rome , befriending a sheepdog along the way. At age 85, Yorick is institutionalized following a joke interpreted as a suicide attempt. User Ratings. September — March This article is about the Mary Shelley novel. -
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley and Frankenstein : a Chronology
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley and Frankenstein : A Chronology PETER DALE SCOTT 1797 August 30. Mary born to William and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who dies from postpartum hemorrhage September 10. 1801 December 21. William Godwin remarries a widow, Mary Jane Clairmont, who brings to the Godwin family her children Charles, aged seven, and Jane (later known as Claire), aged four. 1812 November 11. Mary's first meeting with Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary resides with Baxter family in Dundee, 1812-14. 1814 May 5. Renewed contact in London with Percy Bysshe Shelley. July 28. Percy Shelley elopes with Mary and Claire Clairmont from the Godwin household to France and Switzerland. August 27. Two days after renting a house for six months at Brun- nen, Lake of Lucerne, the Shelley ménage abruptly depart for England. September 13. Return to London. Percy beleaguered by creditors and bailiffs. November 30. Harriet, Percy's wife, gives birth to her second child, Charles. 1815 January. Erotic correspondence and involvement between Mary and T. J. Hogg. xvii A Chronology February 22. Mary gives birth to premature female child, which dies March 6. March 19. (Mary's Journal) "Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived." August. Mary and Percy, without Claire, settle at Bishopsgate, Windsor. 1816 January 24. A son William is born to Mary and Percy. May 3. Percy and Mary, with Claire, leave for Switzerland, arriving ten days later at Geneva, where they meet up with Byron and Polidori. -
London, Ontario December 1997
DIALOGUES OF DESIRE: INTERTEXTUAL NARUTION IN THE WORKS OF MARY SHELLEY AND WILLIAM GODWIN Ranita Chatterjee Department of English Submitted in pzrtial fulfilrnent of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Graduate Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario December 1997 O Ranita Chatterjee 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie SeMces services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence dowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distniute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelnlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thése ni des extraits substantiels may be p~tedor otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent êeimprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT Using Julia Kristeva's concept of intertextuality and Lacan's theories of desire, this study ârgues that there is a dialogic process that generates and circulates an "excess" of meaning that conscripts the desires of future readers in and between William Godwin's and Mary Shelley's fictional and non-fictional writings. -
Blasphemous Bodies: Transgressive Mortality As
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Missouri: MOspace BLASPHEMOUS BODIES: TRANSGRESSIVE MORTALITY AS CULTURAL INTERROGATION IN ROMANCE FICTION OF THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY A DISSERTATION IN English and Religious Studies Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by LORNA ANNE CONDIT M.A., Northwest Missouri State University, 1992 B.A., Park University, 1990 Kansas City, Missouri 2011 ©2011 LORNA ANNE CONDIT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BLASPHEMOUS BODIES: TRANSGRESSIVE MORTALITY AS CULTURAL INTERROGATION IN ROMANCE FICTION OF THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY Lorna Anne Condit, Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2011 ABSTRACT The long nineteenth century was characterized by advances in medical, biological and technological knowledge that often complicated definitions of human life and blurred the lines between life and death. These changes impacted both beliefs and practices surrounding the human body and epistemological concepts relating to human nature and the cosmos. British fiction of the period participated in an interdiscursive tradition that was deeply informed by these discussions of the body. Romance writers in particular often engaged with these ideas in imaginative and innovative ways. Among the more provocative forms of engagement with these ideas is one that arises among romance writers who mingled new scientific knowledge with a iii popular tradition of physical immortality. These writers produced an array of texts treating a theme I have identified as “amortality”, a form of bodily immortality that is characterized by a transgression of death’s bounds either through artificial prolongevity or reanimation. -
Introduction 1 the Gothic and the Sublime
Notes Introduction 1. Angela Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) p. 18. Also see Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion (London: Methuen, 1981) p. 24. All subsequent references are to this edition, and are given in the text. 2. See for example, Marie Bonaparte’s classic Freudian study of Edgar Allan Poe, The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: a Psycho-Analytic Interpretation (1933) trans. J. Rodker (London: Imago, 1949). See also Christine Brooke- Rose, The Rhetoric of the Unreal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) for an early study which uses Lacanian ideas. 3. Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). All subse- quent references are to this edition, and are given in the text. 4. Vijay Mishra, The Gothic Sublime (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994). All subsequent references are to this edition, and are given in the text. 5. David B. Morris, ‘Gothic Sublimity’, New Literary History 16, 2 (1985) 299–319, 302. All subsequent references are to this edition, and are given in the text. 6. Clive Bloom, Reading Poe Reading Freud: the Romantic Imagination in Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1988) p. 8. 1 The Gothic and the Sublime 1. Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) in Art and Literature: Jensen’s Gradiva, Leonardo Da Vinci and Other Works, trans. J. Strachey, ed. A. Dickson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) pp. 339–76. All subsequent references are to this edition, and are given in the text. 2. See Jackson, Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion pp. -
A Creative Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Through the Lens of Her Interpersonal Relationships
Portland State University PDXScholar University Honors Theses University Honors College 2-26-2021 Mary: A Creative Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley through the Lens of Her Interpersonal Relationships Julien-Pierre E. Campbell Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/honorstheses Part of the Fiction Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Campbell, Julien-Pierre E., "Mary: A Creative Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley through the Lens of Her Interpersonal Relationships" (2021). University Honors Theses. Paper 980. https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.1004 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Campbell 1 Mary A Creative Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Through the Lens of her Interpersonal Relationships By Julien-Pierre “JP” Campbell Campbell 2 Percy Shelley 27 June 1814 Night falls slowly around us. The sky has rioted with all of God’s colors and at last succumbed to the pale blue of the gloaming. He stares hard at the sky. Who can know the exact thoughts that are stirred behind that princely brow? His eyes bear the faraway look I’ve come to associate with brilliance. He’s composing. Perhaps I stay quiet long enough -- Lord knows our sepulchral companions will -- he will speak verse. I’m sure I could observe him for rapturous eons. His cheeks are flushed and his curls are mussed. -
The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries
The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries Samuel Fleck Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Samuel Fleck All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Double in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature: Readings in Fogazzaro and His Contemporaries Samuel Fleck This dissertation is organized around main axes: the literary and critical concept of the Double and the analysis of Antonio Fogazzaro’s 1881 novel, Malombra, in which the Double plays a complex thematic role. In the first chapter, I address the concept of the Double as a critical category, assessing its meaning across three different levels of reality: in terms of the cultural specificity of the representation (the nineteenth century and Romantic literature), in terms of the theoretical approach (whether it is construed as a transcendental figure, as in Freudian theory, or a transgressive figure, as in Jungian theory, etc.) and in terms of its placement relative to the other themes in the text. In the second chapter, I take up the analysis of three Italian texts from the second half of the nineteenth century which privilege the theme of the Double and invest it with idiosyncratic meaning: Uno spirito in un lampone by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1867), Due anime in un corpo by Emilio de Marchi (1877) and Le storie del castello di Trezza by Giovanni Verga (1875). My reading of these texts draws on diverse psychoanalytic perspectives, namely those of Jung, Lacan and Abraham and Torok. -
Wandering and Belonging in Mary Shelley's Writings: Frankenstein
『国際開発研究フォーラム』25(2004. 2) Forum of International Development Studies, 25(Feb. 2004) Wandering and Belonging in Mary Shelley’s Writings: Frankenstein and Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot HOSOKAWA Minae* Abstract This essay discusses Mary Shelley’s recently discovered novel, Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot written in 1820. The novel had been overlooked as a story written merely to entertain a child, because Shelley presented the story to a daughter of her friend. The story is a typical fair foundling story, in which the eponymous character Maurice, stolen from his wealthy parents, wanders around to be found by his father. A significant part of the story is comprised of narrations between Maurice and a traveler --- the traveler turns out to be Maurice’s real father searching for his son. Contrary to a negative father-son bond in Frankenstein, there is a positive one in Maurice; however, the two stories have a motif in common. That is a wandering person who seeks three things: a position in society, identity, and family. Family, in these novels, represented in the father-son bond without participation from a mother. This motif underlines the importance in the father-son bond by which males must gain a position in society. Despite the critical neglect of the novel, this paper will explain the exploratory importance of Maurice that illustrates Shelley’s critical insight into the patriarchal succession of authority which rules out women. This issue is made clearer when comparing Maurice with Frankenstein and by introducing the circumstances of the novel’s creation. Introduction Mary Shelley’s Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot1 was written in 1820 as a gift for her friend’s daughter, Laurette. -
Mary Shelley's Mathilda and the Struggle for Female Narrative
Mary Shelley’s Mathilda and the Struggle for Female Narrative Subjectivity Melina Moore City University of New York rom her first appearance on the page in August of 1819, Mary Shelley’s FMathilda has both intrigued and horrified her readers. William Godwin was appalled by the tale, which provides a first-person account of a young woman and her father’s incestuous desire for her, writing that “if [it were] ever published, [it would need] a preface to prevent [readers] from being tormented by ... the fall of the heroine” (Clemit 68). His refusal to publish the manuscript buried it for 140 years, but when it surfaced again in 1959, Elizabeth Nitchie and other early critics took a psychobiographical approach to Shelley’s heroine, conflating Mathilda with the life of her creator and proposing that the text allowed Shelley to dramatize her “excessive & romantic attachment” to her father (Nitchie 459). However, in the 1990s, Charles Robinson challenged psychoanalytic readings by reading Mathilda as not a tragic victim, but as an unreliable narrator—a self-constructed dramatic actress who seizes control of her own script in a novella that explores theatrum mundi. He stresses Shelley’s distance from her protagonist, arguing that she does not seem to “like” this “substantially flawed” heroine who carelessly blurs the lines between fiction and reality (Robinson 77). Robinson’s reading of Mathilda as a dramatic actress who feigns passivity in an attempt to control the other players in her script is especially suggestive in the context of a tradition of female gothic heroines who passively triumph over masculine evil.