Anish Bhattacharyya
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Adamas University.
Orcid: 0000-0001-8104-2752. Email: anishbhattacharyya@gmail.com
Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.21
Received January 16, 2017; Revised May 20, 2018; Accepted May 21, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.
Abstract
There have been several retellings of the Frankenstein narrative since its publication. Peter Ackroyd’s rendition of the same was published in 2008 under the title, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. The text attempts to look at Mary Shelley’s narrative from a different perspective, rather than simply reiterating the events in a familiar way. It employs the historical fictional mode of storytelling. This paper attempts to study the role of Ackroyd as a reader, author and manipulator of history. It will also strive to understand the politics behind Ackroyd’s attempted resurrection of Shelley, Byron, Polidori and Mary Shelley as his characters. The goal is to comprehend, how Ackroyd’s voice functions within this cacophony of voices.
Keywords: rhizome, author, reader, historiographic metafiction, discourse, unreliability.
