Author: George Levine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description

Author: George Levine
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520046405
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
MARY SHELLEY's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus grew out of a parlor game and a nightmare vision. The story of the book's origin is a famous one, first told in the introduction Mary Shelley wrote for the 1831 edition of the novel. The two Shelleys, Byron, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori (Byron's physician) spent a "wet, ungenial summer in the Swiss Alps." Byron suggested that "each write a ghost story." If one is to trust Mary Shelley's account (and James Rieger has shown the untrustworthiness of its chronology and particulars), only she and "poor Polidori" took the contest seriously. The two "illustrious poets," according to her, "annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task." Polidori, too, is made to seem careless, unable to handle his story of a "skull-headed lady." Though Mary Shelley is just as deprecating when she speaks of her own "tiresome unlucky ghost story," she also suggests that its sources went deeper. Her truant muse became active as soon as she fastened on the "idea" of "making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream": "'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others."' The twelve essays in this collection attest to the endurance of Mary Shelley's "waking dream." Appropriately, though less romantically, this book also grew out of a playful conversation at a party. When several of the contributors to this book discovered that they were all closet aficionados of Mary Shelley's novel, they decided that a book might be written in which each contributor-contestant might try to account for the persistent hold that Frankenstein continues to exercise on the popular imagination. Within a few months, two films--Warhol's Frankenstein and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein--and the Hall-Landau and Isherwood-Bachardy television versions of the novel appeared to remind us of our blunted purpose. These manifestations were an auspicious sign and resulted in the book Endurance of Frankenstein.

Author: Berthold Schoene-Harwood
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231121934
Category : Frankenstein (Fictitious character).
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"This Guide encapsulates the most important critical reactions to a novel that straddles the realms of both "high" literature and popular culture. The selections shed light on Frankenstein's historical and socio-political relevance, its innovative representations of science, gender, and identity, as well as its problematic cultural location between academic critique and creative production.

Author: James E. Gunn
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810849020
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Science fiction is a field of literature that has great interest and great controversy among its writers and critics. This book examines the roots, history, development, current status, and future directions of the field through articles contributed by well-respected science fiction writers, teachers, and critics. This book can be used as a textbook for courses in theory as well as courses in science fiction literature and science fiction writing.

Author: Dave Zeltserman
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468303287
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
In this “ingenious interpretation of Shelley’s tale,” Dr. Frankenstein’s monster contends with vampyres, a Satanic cult, and the Marquis de Sade (Historical Novel Society). Framed for the murder of his fiancée, Friedrich Hoffmann is sentenced to death. Broken on the wheel in front of a jeering crowd, he awakens on a lab table, transformed into an abomination. Disoriented, he begins to piece together where he is, what’s become of him, and the identity of the unholy man responsible for his monstrous plight. Friedrich must go far to take his revenge—only to find his tormentor, Victor Frankenstein, in league with the Marquis de Sade, at work on an even more sinister creation deep in the mountains. Paranormal and gripping in the tradition of Stephen King and Justin Cronin, Monster is a gruesome parable of control and vengeance, and a tribute to one of literature’s greatest legends. “An impressive achievement . . . You don’t get much more gothic bang for your buck.” —Los Angles Times

Author: James Kincaid
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317971175
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
What happens when bad criticism happens to good people? Annoying the Victorians sets the tradition of critical discourse and literary criticism on its ear, as well as a few other areas. James Kincaid brings his witty, erudite and thoroughly cynical self to the Victorians, and they will never read (or be read) quite the same.

Author: Mary Poovey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226675289
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"A brilliant, original, and powerful book. . . . This is the most skillful integration of feminism and Marxist literary criticism that I know of." So writes critic Stephen Greenblatt about The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, Mary Poovey's study of the struggle of three prominent writers to accommodate the artist's genius to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideal of the modest, self-effacing "proper lady." Interpreting novels, letters, journals, and political tracts in the context of cultural strictures, Poovey makes an important contribution to English social and literary history and to feminist theory. "The proper lady was a handy concept for a developing bourgeois patriarchy, since it deprived women of worldly power, relegating them to a sanctified domestic sphere that, in complex ways, nourished and sustained the harsh 'real' world of men. With care and subtle intelligence, Poovey examines this 'guardian and nemesis of the female self' through the ways it is implicated in the style and strategies of three very different writers."—Rachel M. Brownstein, The Nation "The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer is a model of . . . creative discovery, providing a well-researched, illuminating history of women writers at the turn of the nineteenth century. [Poovey] creates sociologically and psychologically persuasive accounts of the writers: Wollstonecraft, who could never fully transcend the ideology of propriety she attacked; Shelley, who gradually assumed a mask of feminine propriety in her social and literary styles; and Austen, who was neither as critical of propriety as Wollstonecraft nor as accepting as Shelley ultimately became."—Deborah Kaplan, Novel

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674055527
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator, in an annotated edition that offers insights into Shelley's literary and social worlds.

Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Learning
ISBN: 1438139993
Category : Horror tales, English
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"Perhaps best recognized for the horror films it has spawned, 'Frankenstein,' written by 19-year-old Mary Shelley, was first published in 1818. 'Frankenstein' warns against the irresponsible use of science and technology and makes readers reconsider who the world's monsters really are and how society contributes to creating them. Ideal for research or general interest, this resource furnishes students with a collection of the most insightful critical essays available on this Gothic thriller, selected from a variety of literary sources."--

Author: Robin Hammerman
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1644532549
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Charles E. Robinson, Professor Emeritus of English at The University of Delaware, definitively transformed study of the novel Frankenstein with his foundational volume The Frankenstein Notebooks and, in nineteenth century studies more broadly, brought heightened attention to the nuances of writing and editing. Frankenstein and STEAM consolidates the generative legacy of his later work on the novel's broad relation to topics in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). Seven chapters written by leading and emerging scholars pay homage to Robinson's later perspectives of the novel and a concluding postscript contains remembrances by his colleagues and students. This volume not only makes explicit the question of what it means to be human, a question Robinson invited students and colleagues to examine throughout his career, but it also illustrates the depth of the field and diversity of those who have been inspired by Robinson's work. Frankenstein and STEAM offers direction for continuing scholarship on the intersections of literature, science, and technology. Published by the University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.