Frankenstein

Raw Materials. Half Creatures and Complete Nature in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Homunculus in Goethe’s Faust II

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Siv Frøydis Berg

Associate professor, Ph.D., National Library of Norway. Email: siv.berg@nb.no

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October 2022, Pages 1–8. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.09

First published: October 7, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the General Area)
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Raw Materials. Half Creatures and Complete Nature in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Homunculus in Goethe’s Faust II

Abstract

Why did Mary Shelley’s famous Creature meet its ends in the eternal ice of the Arctic Sea? What made it possible for Goethe’s Homunculus to finally break free in the Classic Walpurgis Night? Both remote places fulfill the destinies of two of the most famous laboratory-made artificial human beings in Western literature, the Creature of Frankenstein, and the “little man”, Homunculus. They are born as half-creatures: Shelley’s Monster as pure body, Homunculus as pure spirit, locked up in a phial. Their lives on earth circle around one purpose: to create themselves as complete human beings, by achieving what they miss: a soul for Shelley’s Creature, a body for Goethe’s Homunculus. This article aims to present a systematic purification and comparison of the creations, lives, and ends of the Monster and Homunculus. My thesis is that each of them literally embodies two opposite and contemporary views of nature, identified in their own time as respectively materialistic and vitalistic positions. By comparing these life spans it is possible to shed light on Shelley’s and Goethe’s literary investment in the debate.

Keywords: Frankenstein, Homunculus, Goethe, Mary Shelley, materialistic and vitalistic, worldview.

Feature image  credit: Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Frankenstein’s Avatars: Posthuman monstrosities in Indian science fiction cinema

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Abhishek V. Lakkad
Doctoral Research Candidate, Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP), School of Social Sciences, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. ORCID: 0000-0002-0330-0661. Email: abhishek.lakkad@gmail.com

    Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.23

Received January 31, 2018; Revised April 22, 2018; Accepted May 19, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.

Abstract

This paper engages with ‘Frankenstein’ as a narrative structure in Indian popular cinema, in the context of posthumanism. Scholarship pertaining to monsters/monstrosity in Indian films has generally been addressed within the horror genre. However, the present paper aspires to understand monstrosity by locating its origins in science and technology through Frankenstein-like characters, thus shifting the locus of examining monstrosity from the usual confines of horror to the domain of science fiction. The paper contends Enthiran/Robot (Shankar 2010 Tamil/Hindi) as an emblematic instance of posthuman monstrosity that employs a Frankenstein narrative. The paper hopes to bring out the significance of cinematic imagination concerning posthuman monsters, to engage with collective social fears and anxieties about various cutting-edge technologies as well as other socio-cultural concerns at the interface of science, technology, body and the society/nation.

Keywords: Frankenstein, Posthumanism, Monstrosity, Indian popular cinema, Science Fiction

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What made the Monster? Lack of Communicative Competence & Communication

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Taejin Koh

Associate Professor, Department of Hindi, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea. Orcid: 0000-0002-9025-800X. Email: tjindia@naver.com

    Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.22

Received January 14, 2018; Revised April 20, 2018; Accepted April 30, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.

Abstract

This paper attempts to interpret Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein from a linguistic point of view. In other words, it discusses why a creature was forced to become the monster with a perspective of communicative competence. The first part of the paper briefly describes Mary Shelly’s family background and talks about linguistic points. The second part analyses the relationship between the monster and his language in relation to the learning process of the language. It also elaborates about the communicative competence. Mary Shelley might pose us a question through the monster’s experience: how his relationship with humans should be based on communication? Then the third part gives us the idea that how this tragic story unfolds Victor Frankenstein’s complete alienation from the society. It seems that Mary Shelley has already warned people of the danger of a lone wolf with scientific advances. In conclusion, the paper stresses the importance of communicative competence based on the frame of the style.

Keywords: Frankenstein, communication, communicative competence, linguistic competence, monster

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More Horrible than the Monster: Social Antagonism and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Ghiasuddin Alizadeh

PhD candidate of English Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Orcid: 0000-0002-4119-2251. Email: Ghiasuddin.alizadeh@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.19

Received January 15, 2017; Revised May 21, 2018; Accepted May 22, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has often been considered as a political novel and an attempt to account for the dire consequences of the failure of the French Revolution. However, contrary to the common vogue for identifying Frankenstein’s monster with the negative dimensions of political and revolutionary movements, a careful reading of the novel reveals a deeper problem hidden behind the figure of the monster. This study is an attempt to read Frankenstein in the light of the politico-psychoanalytical ideas of Slavoj Žižek in an attempt to prove the fact that the monster is Mary Shelley’s fantasy construction in order to conceal the ontological antagonism which marks the socio-symbolic order. By drawing on Žižek’s concept of fantasy and its role in obfuscating the fundamental inconsistency of the Other, the research has tried to disentangle the world of the novel from the horrible presence of the monster, by bringing to light a more frightening horror against which the monster turns out to be a protective screen, namely, the horror of the Real.

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Debapriya Goswami

Assistant Professor of English, Department of Basic Science and English, NSHM Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Durgapur. Orcid: 0000-0002-6801-0083. Email: dg81186@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.20

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This paper is an attempt to bolster the relevance of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein by engaging contemporary bioethical discourses on procreation and parenting. It claims that, besides being a celebrated science fiction for the last two centuries, the novel bears pensive suggestions on parenthood. Exploring the ways in which the creature suffers in the hands of its creator, the paper argues that Frankenstein anticipates the need for an ethics of parenthood. The paper discusses the deficiency in Frankenstein’s parenting, as it seeks to reread his position vis-à-vis his creation. In recent times, parenthood and procreation have been a major bioethical concern. By presenting the views of contemporary philosophers on parenthood, the paper unfolds Shelley’s ingenuity in staging the disturbing ramifications of imprudent parenting on children as early as in the nineteenth century. The paper, hence, is an effort to underscore the contemporaneity of Shelley’s ideas on parental choices which she proficiently enfolds in the narrative of a gothic fiction.

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More Horrible than the Monster: Social Antagonism and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

135 views

Ghiasuddin Alizadeh

PhD candidate of English Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Orcid: 0000-0002-4119-2251. Email: Ghiasuddin.alizadeh@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.19

Received January 15, 2017; Revised May 21, 2018; Accepted May 22, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has often been considered as a political novel and an attempt to account for the dire consequences of the failure of the French Revolution. However, contrary to the common vogue for identifying Frankenstein’s monster with the negative dimensions of political and revolutionary movements, a careful reading of the novel reveals a deeper problem hidden behind the figure of the monster. This study is an attempt to read Frankenstein in the light of the politico-psychoanalytical ideas of Slavoj Žižek in an attempt to prove the fact that the monster is Mary Shelley’s fantasy construction in order to conceal the ontological antagonism which marks the socio-symbolic order. By drawing on Žižek’s concept of fantasy and its role in obfuscating the fundamental inconsistency of the Other, the research has tried to disentangle the world of the novel from the horrible presence of the monster, by bringing to light a more frightening horror against which the monster turns out to be a protective screen, namely, the horror of the Real.

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Frames, Vanishing Points and Blindness: Frankenstein and the Field of Vision

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Will Greenshields

Independent Researcher.  ORCID: 0000-0003-1464-7182. Email: willgreenshields88@gmail.com

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.18

Received January 14, 2017; Revised March 14, 2018; Accepted April 02, 2018; Published May 18, 2018.

Abstract

Whilst the preponderance of references made in Frankenstein to the instruments and organs of the visual field has been repeatedly acknowledged by the text’s readers, little sustained attention has been paid to the field that these instruments and organs both construct and occupy. In this paper we will examine the particularity of this field, outlining its structure (the vanishing points and framing), content (its peculiarities and obscurities) and subjects (their modes of witnessing and blindness). Opening with an analysis of Walton’s visual field qua desirous fantasy in light of his reference to “keeping”, we closely study the visual fields constructed by the artistic, scientific and profane eyes of Shelley, Frankenstein, Clerval and the monster.

Keywords: Frankenstein, aesthetics, ethics.

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Zinia Mitra, Nakshalbari College, Darjeeling, India

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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. Keep Reading

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