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Frankenstein, the modern day prometheus

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« on: April 15, 2007, 05:33:58 pm »

Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus"


Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus
A Tale of Intense Passions
by Wayne Peake


You may ask why should I care about an old horror novel, and what does it have to do with ancient mysteries?

Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" is perhaps more relevant today than when it was written, for we are fast

approaching the time when her nightmare scenario may become a reality. Cloning, genetic engineering all make

Shelly's tale more plausible then could been imagined when it was published in 1818. Perhaps only someone

living in our time could understand the fear of being supplanted by superior scientifically engineered beings.


The novel deals with man's fear of death and an obsession to conquer it and like Prometheus the main character

suffers the tortures of the damned for his audacity, for trespassing on the territory of Gods. His quest to

penetrate the womb of nature and force from her her most hidden and intimate secrets leads to death of all who

are closest to him.


Death is perhaps the greatest ancient mystery of all and Shelly's "Frankenstein" is one man's struggle to

Conquer it. Even with advancements of science and the promise of faith, death remains the great mystery, the

hidden realm. Perhaps mankind will always struggle to understand and reconcile himself with it.


The intense passions we are confronted with every day are amplified, set in stark contrast by the bizzarre

events that unfold throughout the novel, Love, loss, revenge, depair, hatred, alienation, intolerance and

ignorance.


In fact Shelly says that the story of the Monster is only a sort of backdrop on which to set the intense emotional

drama of the characters. But above all emotions the one most central to the story is obsession a drive to

achieve a goal no matter what the consquences, no matter the cost in lives and personal relationships.

 
written by Unknown

several species of small furry animals gathered together and grooving with a pict in a cave



***



The Summer of 1816

Kim W. Britton
Copyright 1996-2003
Last Modified: June 26, 2001

Mary Shelley spent the greater part of the summer of 1816, when she was nineteen, at

the Chapuis in Geneva, Switzerland. The entourage included her stepsister, Claire

Clairmont, Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, Byron's physician. Lord Byron rented

the Villa Diodoti on the shores of Lake Geneva, which John Milton, the author of

Paradise Lost, had visited in the 1600's . Rousseau and Voltaire had also resided on

these shores. Mary considered the area to be sacred to enlightenment.

The weather went from being beautiful and radiant to melodramatically tempestuous.

Torrential rains and incredible lightning storms plagued the area, similar to the

summer that Mary was born . This incredible meteorological change was due to the

eruption of the volcano, Tambora, in Indonesia. The weather, as well as the company and

the Genevan district, contributed to the genesis of Frankenstein.

All contributing events that summer intensified on the night of June 16th. Mary and

Percy could not return to Chapuis, due to an incredible storm, and spent the night at

the Villa Diodati with Byron and Polidori. The group read aloud a collection of German

ghost stories, The Fantasmagoriana. In one of the stories, a group of travelers relate

to one another supernatural experiences that they had experienced. This inspired Byron

to challenge the group to write a ghost story.

Shelley wrote an forgettable story, Byron wrote a story fragment, and Polidori began

the "The Vampyre", the first modern vampire tale. Many consider the main character,

Lord Ruthven, to be based on Byron. For some time it was thought that Byron had

actually written the story but over time it was realized that Dr. Polidori was the

author. Unfortunately, Mary was uninspired and did not start writing anything.

The following evening the group continued their late night activities and at midnight

Byron recited the poem, Christabel by Samuel T. Coleridge. Percy became overwrought

during the reading and perceived Mary as the villainess of the poem. He ran out of the

room and apparently created quite a scene. This incident undoubtedly affected Mary,

leading to feelings of guilt that contributed to the story ideas she later developed.

For the next couple of days Mary was unable to begin her story. The poets dropped

theirs but Mary persisted in her creative endeavor. She felt that her ambitions and her

value were at stake and attempted to turn the pressure and frustration into creative

energy.

On June 22nd, Byron and Shelley were scheduled to take a boat trip around the lake. The

night before their departure the group discussed a subject from de Stael's De

l'Allemagne: "whether the principle of life could be discovered and whether scientists

could galvanize a corpse of manufactured humanoid". When Mary went to bed, she had a

"waking" nightmare:

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put

together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of

some powerful engine, show signs of life...His success would terrify the artist; he

would rush away...hope that...this thing...would subside into dead matter...he opens

his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains...

The next morning Mary realized she had found her story and began writing the lines that

open Chapter IV of Frankenstein - "It was on a dreary night in November"- She completed

the novel in May of 1817 and is was published January 1, 1818.


several species of small furry animals gathered together and grooving with a pict in a cave

 
Mary Shelley and the Desire to Acquire Knowledge: As Demonstrated in the Novel




Frankenstein

Kim W. Britton
Copyright 1996-2003
Last Modified: June 26, 2001

This essay was written by Kim A. Woodbridge, the owner of this site.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was the daughter of the radical feminist, Mary

Wollstonecraft, and the political philosopher, William Godwin, and the wife of the

Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through these familial affiliations, she was also

acquainted with Lord Byron, Samuel T. Coleridge, and other literary figures such as

Charles and Mary Lamb. Surrounded by such influential literary and political figures of

the Romantic Age, it is not surprising that as an adolescent, at the age of 19, she

wrote Frankenstein. Though critically a failure, (British Critic,1818 and Monthly

Review, 1818) the novel has never been out of print and has been translated into

numerous languages. What is surprising, however, is the enormous body of knowledge

contained in the novel. The novel contains references to the fields of literature,

poetry, science, education, politics, history, and mythology. How did such a young

girl, living a life considered morally objectionable to society and harassed by family

and financial burdens, acquire such a vast amount of knowledge in all fields of study

that encompassed the important issues of her day? Through examination of biographical

information and Mary Shelley's journal entries, we will be able to answer this

question. Following, I also plan to highlight Mary Shelley's knowledge of literature

with primary emphasis on the works studied by the monster in relation to his origins as

well as Mary Shelley's.

Mary Shelley was born with notoriety simply by being named Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

Her parents were well known and somewhat suspect individuals due to their radical

political beliefs and writings, such as Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of

Women and Godwin's Enquiry Concerning the Nature of Political Justice. Mary Shelley's

mother died from complications shortly after giving birth to Mary. The infamy of her

existence was heightened by her father's subsequent publication of Memoirs of the

Author of the Rights of Women. In this work, William Godwin described many aspects of

Mary Wollstonecraft's existence in great detail such as; her relationship with an

American and subsequent birth of an illegitimate daughter, her suicide attempts, and

the fact that she was already pregnant with Mary when William Godwin married her. To

our late 20th Century sensibilities we may not approve of these behaviors but we

certainly don't consider then shocking or extraordinary. The above mentioned events,

however, occurred in the late 1700's and were not morally acceptable, were abhorrent to

the conventions of society, and were certainly not to be discussed or published in a

memoir. William Godwin's publication of this memoir, more than any other event, created

an air of societal stigma around Mary Shelley almost from the moment of her birth.

Mary Shelley increased her already infamous existence by running off with Percy Bysshe

Shelley when she was 17 in 1814. Percy Shelley was already married and abandoned his

pregnant wife and his daughter to live with Mary Shelley. They lived together and had

two illegitimate children prior to getting married in December 1816. They married a

couple of weeks after Percy's wife, Harriet, committed suicide by drowning herself in

the Serpentine. Mary Shelley became a societal outcast for these actions and had few

friends. "Within days she discovered that all of her old circle shunned her, intimates

who had cherished her and friends who professed the most liberal principles" (Sunstein

88). Her own father, hypocritically enough, who lived with Mary Wollstonecraft without

being married, would not speak to Mary until she and Percy were legally married. Godwin

publicly stated, "Mary has committed a crime against hallowed social arrangements,

morality, her family, and Harriet Shelley"(Sunstein 89).

Mary and Percy also had numerous other family and financial problems. Even though Percy

was to eventually inherit a considerable amount of money, he had many debts and was

constantly harassed by creditors. The couple continually moved in order to evade bill

collectors. The first ten months of their relationship they moved four times and, in

fact, never shared a permanent home together. The couple also had to deal with

ostracism from their families as well as many deaths in the family. During their first

two and half years together their first child was born prematurely and died two weeks

later, Percy's first wife committed suicide, and Mary's half sister, Fanny Imlay,

committed suicide. In the midst of numerous pregnancies and family, financial, and

societal turmoil, however, Mary Shelley managed to conceive of, write, and publish the

enduring Frankenstein Again, one must ask how such a young woman, not much more than an

adolescent, who was besieged by so many difficulties that few would be able to

withstand, could have the creative imagination and even find the time to write this

novel.

Not only was Mary Shelley born with notoriety due to an infamous name but was also

considered the child of two literary parents and high expectations were placed on her

creative output. There were many prestigious visitors to the Godwin household, with one

of the most notable and influential being Samuel T. Coleridge. When Mary Shelley was

very young, she heard Coleridge recite the famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which

would later be referenced many times in Frankenstein. She never received a formal

education, normal for women for that time period, but grew up surrounded by literary

figures and the writings of her parents and was always encouraged to study and be

creative.

Influenced by Godwin, Mary Shelley developed a lifelong habit of deep and extensive

reading and research" (Bennett, "Romantic Revisions" , 299).

Mary Shelley's desire to acquire knowledge and her disciplined study and research

habits are demonstrated in her journal entries. She rarely wrote anything of a personal

nature so there is little biographical information to be gained from the journals. She

did, however, keep a detailed record of what she was reading and studying on an almost

daily basis. On a typical day she generally studied a complex work, read some of a

novel, and studied a foreign language. For example, on September 19, 1814, Mary studied

Greek, read Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson, and read a novel called The Sorcerer (Feldman,

27). Almost every day is filled with a similar pattern of study. Even in the midst of

all the difficulties discussed previously, she still spent a considerable portion of

each day doing research. The only times that the amount of her work and research abated

was when she was ill, which was often due to her many pregnancies, or something truly

traumatic happened, such as the death of a child or other family member.

The desire to acquire knowledge and the intense passion for research and study is

evident throughout the novel, Frankenstein and is demonstrated through the three

narrators; Victor Frankenstein, Walden, and the monster. Frankenstein's and Walden's

quest for new knowledge of the unknown and the monster's search for knowledge of his

origins parallel Mary Shelley's lifelong scholarly pursuit and her interest in her own

biological origins due to her birth causing her mother's death.

At the very beginning of the novel, Mary Shelley's educational experiences and love of

literary research are told through Walden, the arctic explorer.

"My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were

my study day and night" (Shelley, 2).

"These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, these poets whose effusions

entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived

in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the

temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated"(Shelley,2).

In narrating his experiences to Walden, Victor Frankenstein also tells of his yearning

for a higher knowledge. The following passages demonstrate this;

"One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the

knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the

elemental foes of our race"(Shelley,13).

"You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope the gratification

of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been"(Shelley, 15)

The above passages give the reader a glimpse into Mary Shelley's fascination with

knowledge and are typical of the discussions of scholarly pursuits central to the

novel. The voice of Victor Frankenstein provides evidence that Mary Shelley did not

believe that all knowledge was "good" knowledge and instead thought that there were

some areas that were beyond human understanding and should not be pursued. Obviously,

Victor Frankenstein's desire to explore the mystery of biological creation belonged to

the realm of knowledge that should not pursued and that can only lead to dire

consequences. Walden was also following the same quest in his search for a passage

through the Arctic regions. Only by hearing the tale of Frankenstein is he dissuaded

from his pursuit and turns back toward home rather than placing his crew members in

mortal danger.

Many of the works that Mary Shelley studied are evident in the voice and character of

Frankenstein's monster and through this character the reader is given a demonstration

of the pursuit of knowledge as related to one's search for his origins. Since Victor

Frankenstein abandoned his creation, the monster was left to fend for himself in a

society hostile to his gigantic and terrifying appearance and was forced to learn and

develop without any parental guidance. Mary Shelley introduced the theory of the

development of human knowledge and awareness as defined by John Locke in his Essay

Concerning Human Understanding which she studied almost daily in December 1816 and

January 1817 (Feldman, 148-154 and Pollin, 107). During this time she was already

working on the novel. Her assumptions of the development of human understanding

"correspond to those of Locke, concerning the absence of innate principles, the

derivation of all ideas from sensation or reflection, and the efficacy of pleasure and

pain in causing us to seek or avoid the various objects of sensation" (Pollin, 107).

The following passage is one of many examples of Mary Shelley's belief in John Locke's

theory.

"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all

the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of

sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time; and it was,

indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operation of my various

senses" (Shelley, 87).

Another considerable influence on Mary Shelley and in turn the monster, was the works

of Rousseau. Mary studied Rousseau early in her own intellectual development (Marshall,

182) and during the period that she composed Frankenstein"(Feldman, 93-97). In

Rousseau's Second Discourse is a discussion on the state of natural man or what

Rousseau calls the "noble savage". Frankenstein's monster is an embodiment of this

state of being developed by Rousseau, in which the monster first discovers himself and

later the knowledge of language and the conventions of society. The monster's narration

of his personal development and later acquisition of knowledge has been recognized by

critics of the novel as a "noble savage whose early life in the forest (drinking at

brooks, eating nuts and berries and not meat, sleeping under trees, encountering fire

for the first time, acquiring language, and so on) conforms in general outline and

specific details to the life of Rousseau's savage"(Marshall, 183).

In addition to the developmental and natural state theories introduced in the novel,

there are also four literary and historical works that Mary Shelley read and studied

between the time that she eloped with Percy in 1814 and the publication of Frankenstein

in 1818, that were of primary importance in the creation of this novel. They are as

follows; Paradise Lost by John Milton, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, Lives by

Plutarch, and The Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Women by William Godwin. The

first three assist in the monster's education and understanding of human society, which

will be discussed shortly. First, however I will discuss the Memoirs as related to the

monster's discovery of Victor Frankenstein's journal, and how the journal and Memoirs

relate to Mary Shelley's and the monster's search for the knowledge of who they are.

In addition to trying to understand and fit into human society, it was of primary

importance for the monster to understand who he was and his origins. He developed, by

himself, through the experience of sensations without guidance from similar beings. He

was shunned by society and had no understanding of why he was different, why he had no

family and why there was no one else like him.

The most significant mark of the monster's alienation from society was his lack of a

name. The absence of a name denies the monster the knowledge of who he is, his familial

origins, and a connection to successive generations (Duyfhuizen, 480). The monster's

lack of a name and place in society, which caused him such distress, is shown in the

following passage when he his narrating his experiences to Victor.

"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no

mother blessed me with smiles and caresses. I had never yet seen a being resembling me,

or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? (Shelley, 106)

The monster finally learns of the origin of his creation by discovering the journal,

that Victor kept while forming the creature, in the pocket of his clothes. The journal

described in graphic detail the procedures that Victor utilized to create this new

being during the four months preceding the night that Victor brought the creature to

life. For the monster, this discovery was a relief because he finally knew more about

his "family" and from where he came but the discovery was also equally disturbing

(Homans, 149). The monster notes that "everything is related in them which bears

reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of the series of disgusting

circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest descriptions of my odious

and loathsome person is given"(Shelley, 114-115).

In the above passage Mary Shelley may also be relating the discovery of her own

origins. As discussed earlier, William Godwin published the Memoirs of the Author of

the Rights of Women shortly after Mary Wollstonecraft's death and this biography

described in great detail Wollstonecraft's life, affairs, suicide attempts, and

relationship with Godwin. The work also provides a graphic account of the birth of Mary

Shelley and the subsequent demise of Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin's Memoirs were

considered to be "the most hurtful book of 1798" (May, 503) in which Godwin provides

"gynecological explicitness in describing his wife's death after bearing Mary"(May,

503). Mary Shelley read this work while growing up and probably studied it further

while developing the novel. The supposition that she read the Memoirs while working on

Frankenstein is conjecture as it is not noted in her journal. It is, however, probable

that she did because there is such a similarity between the creation of the monster and

her own origins and she may not have wanted to note such a personal work in her journal

that would one day possibly be subject to public scrutiny. As the monster discovered

the horror of his own creation, similarly Mary was subjected to the "horrors of her own

origins as a matricide by the fact that she, along with every English speaking person

of her age, was able to witness the primal scene of her creation in Godwin's

memoirs"(May, 503).

The three works, previously mentioned, that Mary Shelley studied while developing the

novel are of primary importance in the monster's understanding of the aspects that make

one human and part of society. Mary Shelley conveniently has the monster discover these

three works and study them after he had developed language skills and the ability to

read. Through the study of Paradise Lost The Sorrows of Young Werther and Plutarch's

Lives the monster acquires an understanding of the spiritual, emotional, and civic

aspects of human society. The monster obtained knowledge through the study of these

works, but he read all three of them as histories of human civilization, when Plutarch

was the only one that was actually a biographical history.

Mary Shelley studied Plutarch's Lives in 1815 (Feldman, 91) the year prior to beginning

Frankenstein. It is a biographical account of noble Romans and their heroic deeds.

Through the study of this work, both Mary Shelley and the monster learned about models

of human conduct (Sunstein, 49). The monster states, "Plutarch taught me high thoughts;

he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the

heroes of past ages" (Shelley, 113). Unfortunately, for both Mary Shelley and her

monstrous creation, few noble deeds were encountered, and instead, both received

ostracism and even hatred from society.

The second important work is The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Mary Shelley's

journal notes that she studied this work in 1815 (Feldman, 91). This work is the tale

of a man who experiences unrequited love and eventually commits suicide. Through the

study of this work the monster gains an understanding of the emotional aspect of human

nature and learns about the feelings of love and despair. In relating the experience of

studying this work to Victor the monster states,

"The diquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did

not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions

of the hero, whose extinction I wept" (Shelley, 113).

The Sorrows of Young Werther were important to Mary Shelley in the understanding of her

dead mother as they were important to the monster in understanding human emotion. Mary

Shelley's mother tried to kill herself due to her unrequited love for Gilbert Imlay,

the father of Mary's half-sister, Fanny. Due to this, William Godwin saw many

similarities between his wife and the character created by Goethe. In Godwin's Memoirs

he calls Mary Wollstonecraft the "female Werther" and states that her letters to

Gilbert Imlay bear a striking resemblance to the romance of Werther (Marshall, 218).

Mary Shelley would have been aware of this having already read the Memoirs. Thus, Mary

Shelley utilized the work, that helped her understand the emotional state of her

mother, in the novel, so that the monster to could also learn about the experience of

human emotion.

The final work, that influences the novel and the monster, is Paradise Lost by John

Milton. Mary Shelley spent a considerable amount of time studying this work and read it

a number of times prior to writing Frankenstein ( Feldman, 89 and 96). Mary Shelley

utilized this work to give her novel mythic scope and the following passage was used as

the epigraph;

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me Man, did I solicit thee From

darkness to promote me? (Johnson, xii).

The monster also read this literary work as the true history of the origin of the

creation of human beings. He saw aspects of himself in both the characters of Adam and

Satan. He was like Adam in that he was the first of his type of creation and was unlike

any living creature. The monster, however, felt a stronger connection to the character

of Satan in that he was spurned by his creator, Victor, just as Satan was cast out of

heaven by God. The creature related his feelings about his identification with the

characters from Paradise Lost in the following passage;

"Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his

state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the

hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous but I was wretched, helpless, and

alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often,

like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within

me"(Shelley, 114).

It is my personal belief that Mary may have also felt, at times, as the monster does in

the above passage. She was human, like all others, but had parents who were political

radicals, had a singular educational experience, had the origin of her own creation

published for the entire world to read, and ran off with a married man. The combination

of the above experiences set Mary apart from society and caused her to feel the

isolation and alienation of an outcast; an outcast like her monster and Milton's Satan.

She differs from the monster in that she is notorious for her name, not her appearance,

while the monster has no name and is instead an outcast due to the differences in the

way he appears to others. In many ways Mary Shelley saw herself as the monster that she

created and identified further with the monster by having him read the same works that

she did.

Through the study of Mary Shelley's journals and her biography, one becomes aware of

how important study and research were to her. Her biography tells how the influence of

her literary parents and husband provided her with a unique educational experience and

how she was encouraged to conduct research. Her journals provide a detailed list of all

the works that she studied and assist in relating what she studied to the creation of

her timeless classic and all of the knowledge, especially of human origins, that is

contained in the novel. Most importantly, the combination of the journal and her

biography help answer how such a young woman with such a troubled life created such an

enduring piece of literature. She had a great love of research and knowledge and used

her studies in her creative output.

--------------------
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'The author is become a creator-God' (Herder). The deification of creativity in

relation to 'Frankenstein'.


Kim W. Britton
Copyright 1996-2003

This essay was written and submitted by Ruth Bushi, who recently completed work on her

Masters at the University of Durham. She can be contacted at r.bushi@blueyonder.co.uk

You can vist her website at ReDGhost

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein can be read as an allegory for the creative act of

authorship. Victor Frankenstein, the 'modern Prometheus' seeks to attain the knowledge

of the Gods, to enter the sphere of the creator rather than the created. Like the

Author, too, he apes the ultimate creative act; he transgresses in trying to move into

the feminine arena of childbirth.

Myths of divine creation are themselves part of the historical process that seeks to

de-throne the feminine; this is the history of Art, itself at first denied to women as

an outlet of self-expression. It is a process recorded in Art itself, in stories like

that of Prometheus. Prometheus in earlier myths stole fire from the Gods (analogous to

the author at his craft). Later he was credited not just as Man's benefactor but as his

creator. Man creates God through myth so as to have a power to will towards.

At this point text, analogy, and reality twist upon each other. As Victor moves into

the female space of the womb, an act of creation aped by the Gods in mythology and

religion, Mary Shelley as author moves into the male domain of art, aping the creative

power of the Gods.

Reading Frankenstein as an analogy for Art can be more fruitful if done within the

framework of Oscar Wilde's essay, 'The Decay of Lying', in which the author argues that

the artist creates the world and not just imitates it: this will conclude this essay.

At the meal between mortals and the Gods at Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into

accepting the bones over the choicest entrails. Man was punished by the denial of fire;

Prometheus again defied the Gods in stealing it. As punishment, he was chained to a

cliff, and Zeus sent an eagle daily to peck at his liver. In the dramatisation by

Aeschylus, Zeus is depicted as a tyrant who would kill all mankind; Prometheus is

defiant against tyranny: 'let him raise/ my body high and dash it whirling down/ to

murky Tartarus. He cannot make me die.' (Cassell Dictionary of Classical Mythology 338)

In later versions of the myth, Prometheus in some way becomes the creator of Man,

fashioning him out of mud. After the great flood, Prometheus' son and daughter-in-law

were the only survivors, and re-propagated the sexes.

The concept of Frankenstein was created in part in the summer of 1816, through Lord

Byron's literary challenge, inclement weather, and a nightmare. Literary sources

included Paradise Lost and Ovid's Metamorphoses, which the Shelleys read the year

before. Thus the idea for a story based on the Prometheus myth, and of the baseness of

the condition of existence without God seems intentional, and engendered by these

sources.

The novel reflects a climate in which literary worship of the divine was to an extent

forsaken in favour of the awe-inspiring wonder of Nature; the concept of the sublime

was in itself a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The Romantic Movement

saw a concerted effort to return to superstition and excess of imagination. It was

marked by a Gothic 'revival' and the birth of science fiction in Shelley's text, and by

the deification of the Natural world, and Man himself.

Frankenstein begins with a narrative that in some ways mirrors the tale it tells.

Robert Walton's polar expedition is, like Frankenstein's, a search for the unknown and

amidst the breathtaking beauty of the natural world:

I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a

thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming

eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight

of a part of the world never before visited - these are my enticements. Frankenstein 10
The enticements, in fact, are firmly rooted in potential glory. What Walton desires is

to 'obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are

consecrated' (Frankenstein 11). He too wants to share in the cultural deification of

authorship; in his youth he to had been a poet, in later life he substitutes the hopes

of fresh discovery as supplementary to creation. The deification of authorship in both

these forms is aggregated in his reaction to Victor Frankenstein as a 'divine wanderer'

(Frankenstein 24). The adjective is a reference to Frankenstein's grace in misery, his

unabated ability to appreciate the wonder of Nature; at this point Walton is unaware of

the divine aspirations that his patient has in fact attained.

Frankenstein himself makes the analogy of exploration and writing, 'The world was to me

a secret which I desired to discover; to her [Elizabeth] it was a vacancy, which she

sought to people with imaginations of her own.' (Frankenstein 30) The divide is not so

great; Victor also populates his world with the creation of his imagination.

The deification of science as described in Shelley's work, depends upon the defiance of

God. Victor is at first charmed by natural science because of the grand dreams of its

masters in seeking power and immortality; he is able to study modern chemistry after

attending M. Waldman's lecture: '[These modern masters] penetrate into the recesses of

nature, and shew how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens'

(Frankenstein 42). In succumbing to Waldman's lecture, Frankenstein does not become his

student, but his disciple. Wilde called Science the history of failed religions; more

than this it is in itself a kind of religion-substitute, favoured by rationalists, and

for the Romantics reflective of a artistic climate unable to rely on the benevolence of

God. And yet, despite an absence of God, there is still a lack of free will, or at

least a reliance on 'bad faith'. Frankenstein feels his meeting with Waldman fixes his

destiny; inexorable fate also condemns him to pursue the monster to the arctic.

Gilbert and Gubar reiterate the concept of textual creation as birth allegory: 'anyone

who has read Shakespeare's sonnets knows about this comparison of the child to the text

as a way of securing one's immortality.' (Waxman 15) In Shelley's text, then, the

author attempts not only a dissection of the (male) Soul as a product of the Romantic

age, but she also pushes forward the boundaries of knowledge of 'feminine' creation.

Victor transgresses the Natural order in moving into the feminine sphere in a physical

capacity. He creates around him a 'work-shop of filthy creation' (Frankenstein 50);

this is the male womb of creation. His progress at this time is recorded in the

language of pregnancy:

After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my

desires, was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so

great and so overwhelming, that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to

it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. Frankenstein 47

Moreover, as Waxman also suggests, Frankenstein's creative experiment results in the

doubling of identity as happens during pregnancy; some critics have read the monster as

Victor's double, a symbol of both the goodness inherent in Man, and his fated Fall from

Grace. Frankenstein's initial motivation is feminine in that it is benevolent, born of

a wish to benefit mankind. Waxman calls it the 'female realm of the Gift' (Waxman 19).

Finally, Victor attains something of the feminine in achieving a new understanding of

Life and Death: Life and Death are as inseparable as two sides of the same piece of

paper. 'A pregnant woman usually intuits how close she is to death even as she is

carrying life and feeling the pulses of the creative process in her own body' (Waxman

19); this can be juxtaposed against Frankenstein's dream of his dead mother. The

warning of the dream is impressed further by an earlier description of natural

creation: 'never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest, or the vine yield a

more luxuriant vintage: but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature.'

(Frankenstein 50, emphasis added) Instead, he is rooting in charnel houses, forcing

decaying remains to cohere, to renew the vital principle.

Ultimately, Frankenstein's creation ends in chaos and confusion; Victor is unprepared

for the reality that lies beyond socially imposed gender constraints. Women are

inherently maternal, and yet he notes, 'when I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my

eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so

thoughtlessly bestowed.' (Frankenstein 87) Thus Frankenstein seeks, in vain, the

feminine arena of creativity; his actions also parody the myths of divine creation.

The concept of God as known in Christianity is present only implicitly in the text, for

example in that Frankenstein is compelled to make the monster in his own image (thus

begging the question, who is the real monster?) This is emphasised through explicit

reference to the gods of mythology, such as in the novel's subtitle.

An explanation of this is perhaps to be found more in the monster's tale than in

Victor's, and in its parallels with Paradise Lost. The comment that seems evident in

Frankenstein is that God has abandoned Man; the progression of history sees Man abandon

God in the Victorian era. 'Oh truly I am grateful to thee my Creator for the gift of

life, which was but pain, and thy tender mercy which deserted me on life's threshold to

suffer' (Frankenstein 114). The monster, then, is made a symbol for Man: his alienation

from his creator mirrors that which Victor himself feels in the torture of free will,

which through bad faith he interprets as inexorable destiny, and evil at that.

The monster's tale may itself be read as allegory, of a paradise not even gained.

Agatha and Felix would appear to be representations of Elizabeth and Victor. DeLacey

could either symbolise Victor's father, or perhaps the repressed merciful aspect of

Victor's character: God the Father rather than just the Creator. Two parts of the text

which can be compared with the latter would be firstly the monster's parody of Victor's

spiritual and moral blindness in covering his eyes; secondly Felix's violent reception

of the monster. 'Begone, vile insect!' as Victor cries, 'or rather stay, that I may

trample you to dust.' (Frankenstein 94) The arrival of the Arabian marks one possible

conclusion to the monster's story, though one that remains unfulfilled.

The potential for creation is not entirely denied to men. As the monster demonstrates,

Man makes Man. After Victor's literal creation, it is the literary creations of Goethe

and Milton which in turn fire the monster with virtuous feeling. His reception by the

DeLaceys develops his spiritual monstrosity: 'Many times I considered Satan as the

fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my

protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.' (Frankenstein 125)

At this stage he is utterly alienated from his own Creator. He realises that he is

wholly alone, without mother, father, or friend; it is the condition of Man to live, as

Joseph Conrad wrote, as he dreams: alone.

Thus Frankenstein's monster himself seeks to share in Man's mimicry of creation through

connection with Others. He wants to be 'made' (affirmed, sexually and non-sexually) by

a female companion, and in turn wants to affirm his companion. He is denied this

supplementary womb by the 'No of the Father', and instead (un)makes Elizabeth on her

wedding night in lieu of Victor.

The only kind of creation that the monster can achieve is out of line with the natural

order. He is gleeful when he kills William: 'I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is

not impregnable' (Frankenstein 139, emphasis added).

If God is absent in Frankenstein, the sublime wonder of Nature is a substitute; it

produces in Victor feelings of almost religious ecstasy: 'my heart, which was before

sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy' (Frankenstein 93). It is Nature, the

natural order, which Frankenstein seeks to subvert. As Shelley's text is analogous to

the Prometheus myth, there is a similar textual reflection in Wilde's essay mourning

'The Decay of Lying'.

For Wilde, the magnificence of Nature, which can inspire such awe in Victor, is not a

factor: 'Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One's individuality

absolutely leaves one.' (Wilde 215) So Nature would appear to 'unmake' one; it is Art

that affirms us, and indeed creates the world. Frankenstein's monster is partly made by

literature: 'As I read,' he remarks, I applied much personally to my own feelings and

conditions.' (Frankenstein 124) If writing is supplementary to the speech of the

authors, ultimately it is still the case that human connection creates personality: Man

makes Man.

In his essay, Wilde reiterates the principle of Art that views the artist as God;

'Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is our brain that

she quickens to life.' (Wilde 232) Nature, then, is a very poor muse that the artist

improves through defamiliarisation: 'people see fogs not because there are fogs, but

because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects.'

(Wilde 232) Moreover, Art is made feminine by the male tradition; once again it is

feminine creativity that is overthrown.

Art begins by creating the brown fog of London: thereafter people begin to see the fog

in actuality. Hence it is not even a case of defamiliarisation that Wilde is proposing.

So, Life imitates Art. Artists, Wilde asserts, create a type, and Life tries to

reproduce it in popular form. An example would be notions of femininity as a result of

the image of Woman in Art. Wilde writes, 'the world has become sad because a puppet

[Hamlet] was once melancholy.' (Wilde 230) Eventually, fictions replace reality, such

as the example the author gives in his essay, of a Man seeking to find the 'Japan' of

oriental art: eventually he must concede as a searching for the irretrievable.

Art is Power, and the Artist is made all-powerful. Moreover, Wilde's aesthetics also

support the idea of an artistic elite. Art (ornate falsehood) is achieved only through

study and devotion: it is not for the common, 'uneducated' man to practice, or to wield

power. Artists, furthermore, should not seek to revert to realism: to do so produces

work that is 'vulgar, common and uninteresting.' (Wilde 225)

The apex of Wilde's argument is that Art is the product of beautiful falsehoods. This

assertion can be read as affirmative of the concepts of the Romantic era and the Gothic

revival, of worlds peopled with the creations of wild imagination. 'Art begins as

abstract decoration with purely imaginative and pleasurable work dealing with what is

unreal and non-existent' (Wilde 225): this surely is true of Frankenstein.

Read in light of 'The Decay of Lying', Frankenstein on another level illustrates the

'divinity' of authorship. Art, Wilde said, is superior to Nature because the former

constantly evolves new techniques; new ways of seeing new worlds. Hence consider

Shelley's work as the product of an age rebelling against the traditions of the last,

the Enlightenment. Finally, 'Art talks of nothing but itself' (Wilde 234);

Frankenstein, like the myth of Prometheus is not symbolic of any age, it is these ages

which are symbols of Art. Thus, to discuss Frankenstein is to discuss, at a tangent,

Paradise Lost, Ovid's Metamorphoses as well as Wilde's essay.

As well as codified symbols woven into the text, Shelley's act of authorship further

emphasises the Artist's relationship to divinity. Victor's miraculous creation, his

renewal of life, is literary wish-fulfilment. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf exorcises the

memories of her dead parents; she lays them to rest, textually. Through Frankenstein,

Shelley plays out a desire to resurrect. Victor's lessons of Life and Death are born of

Mary Wollstonecraft's death in childbirth. As he metaphorically gives birth, he dreams

of Shelley's, dead mother. (Unnatural) childbirth also eventually kills Victor.

The historical process is one of rebellion and succession. Texts can also be part of

this process; such is the case with Frankenstein. Man overthrows the Gods, as

Prometheus, and later, in a different sense, the intellectuals of the Victorian and

Modernist periods did. Frankenstein usurps the divine role; he is in turn made slave by

his creation. Even within the narrative, there is a battle for supremacy of voice:

Waldman's tale is taken over by Frankenstein's and in turn by that of the monster.

Since the success of Shelley's novel, and the birth of the horror and science fiction

genres, and the affect it has likewise had on the film industry, the monster has not

only overthrown his monster, but has taken his name. In popular use, particularly since

the transition of the story to film, 'Frankenstein' has often mistakenly been used to

signify the monster. This transition itself reflects the process of progression and

substitution. As in the case of the non-existent deerstalker that Conan-Doyle never

wrote about, celluloid representations have come to denote the essence, supposedly, of

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein


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"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
Elphias Levi

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« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2007, 05:35:52 pm »




Frankenstein

Mary Shelly

Preface

THE event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some

of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not

be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination;

yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as

merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the

story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or

enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes;

and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination

for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which

the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human

nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the

tragic poetry of Greece-- Shakspeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream --and

most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble

novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without

presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of

which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest

specimens of poetry.

The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was

commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising

any untried resources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these as the work

proceeded. I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral

tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader;

yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding the enervating

effects of the novels of the present day and to the exhibition of the amiableness of

domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The opinions which

naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be

conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be

drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever

kind.

It is a subject also of additional interest to the author that this story was begun in

the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot

cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The

season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire,

and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to

fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other

friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public

than anything I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story

founded on some supernatural occurrence.

The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey

among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of

their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.


Warning for those who haven't read the novel THIS IS A SPOILER

excerpt

Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the remembrance of

it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail it; yet the tale which I

have recorded would be incomplete without this final and wonderful catastrophe.

I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over

him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe; gigantic in stature, yet uncouth

and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin his face was concealed by

long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent

texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach he ceased to utter

exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. Never did I behold a

vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my

eyes involuntarily and endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this

destroyer. I called on him to stay.

He paused, looking on me with wonder; and, again turning towards the lifeless form of

his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and gesture seemed

instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion.

"That is also my victim!" he exclaimed: "in his murder my crimes are consummated; the

miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! generous and

self-devoted being! what does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who

irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold, he

cannot answer me."

His voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty

of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying his enemy, were now suspended

by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I approached this tremendous being; I dared

not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in

his ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster

continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution

to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion: "Your repentance," I said, "is

now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings

of remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity,

Frankenstein would yet have lived.

"And do you dream?" said the damon; "do you think that I was then dead to agony and

remorse?--He," he continued, pointing to the corpse, "he suffered not in the

consummation of the deed--oh! not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was

mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me

on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval were

music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and

when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred it did not endure the violence of the change

without tone such as you cannot even imagine.

"After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland heart-broken and overcome. I

pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror: I abhorred myself. But when I

discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments,

dared to hope for happiness; that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me

he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was

for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable

thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat and resolved that it should be

accomplished. I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture; but I was the

slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested, yet could not disobey. Yet when

she died!--nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling, subdued all

anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged

thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly

chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it

is ended; there is my last victim!"

I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind

what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again

cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me.

"Wretch!" I said, "it is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you

have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and when they are consumed you

sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! if he whom you mourn still

lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed

vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your

malignity is withdrawn from your power."

"Oh, it is not thus--not thus," interrupted the being; "yet such must be the impression

conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a

fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it

was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole

being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to

me a shadow and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing

despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my

sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium

should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of

enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form,

would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was

nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me

beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be

found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot

believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and

transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the

fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends

and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

"You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his

misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours

and months of misery which I endured, wasting in impotent passions. For while I

destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and

craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no

injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal when all human kind sinned

against me? Why do you not hate Felix who drove his friend from his door with

contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his

child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the

abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my

blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.

"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have

strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to death his throat who never injured

me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all

that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to

that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me; but your

abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which

executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived,

and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will

haunt my thoughts no more.

"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is nearly

complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate the series of my

being, and accomplish that which must be done; but it requires my own. Do not think

that I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the iceraft

which brought me thither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I

shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its

remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such

another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now

consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who

called me into being; and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will

speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my

cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my

happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon

me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and

the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it

is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where

can I find rest but in death?

"Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these eyes will ever

behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive, and yet cherished a desire of

revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But

it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction that I might not cause greater

wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hast not ceased to think and

feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel.

Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of

remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them for ever.

"But soon," he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and what I now feel

be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my

funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of

that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My

spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."

He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to

the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance

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« Last Edit: April 18, 2007, 11:34:57 pm by unknown » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
Elphias Levi
unknown
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Posts: 1603



« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2007, 06:30:08 pm »



Carolyn Silver


Cool start, Unknown! And it has a LOT to do with Ancient Mysteries, at least in my opinion!
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Posts: 403 | Registered: Jan 2005  |  Logged: 66.41.74.208 |   
 
unknown
               
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Thanks Carolyn

I want to reread Frankenstein now, its available online

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Carolyn Silver

                
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Anything more on it maybe being based on a true story..?
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unknown

               
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Actually I think there may be...
I think I saw something on TV about it being loosely based on an actual doctor at time

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unknown

         
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http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa102300a.htm


The Frankenstein Monster
Most people are aware that the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created come from the novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, wife of the acclaimed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. What many people do not know is that Victor Frankenstein was based on the real-life Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734), a kind of 18th century mad scientist who was born in 1673 in Germany at - believe it or not - Castle Frankenstein.
Castle Frankenstein
in Strasbourg


Educated as a physician, Dippel set up a laboratory at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, Germany where he would be free to conduct his bizarre experiments. There's no record of whether or not he had a hunchbacked assistant named Igor, but Dippel (who often went by the name Konrad Frankensteina) spent a lot of his time with his hobby of alchemy - a popular pursuit of the day. Alchemy is a kind pseudoscientific experimentation with the elements - crazy chemistry - whose ultimate challenge was to be able to turn lead into gold. Like Victor Frankenstein, Dippel was also fascinated by the possibility of immortality through scientific means. He really did use the parts of butchered animals and exhumed human corpses in his vain attempt to "engender life in the dead," in his own words.

Unlike his literary and cinematic "decedents," Dippel did not rig up the body parts to elaborate lightning-powered gizmos and spark generators. Rather he boiled everything - skin, muscle, bone, blood, hair and organs - in large vats. When the surrounding community got wind of what Dippel was up to, maybe they didn't storm his castle with torches, shovels and rakes, but they did kick him out of town.

Shelly undoubtedly based her novel on Dippel's antics, since it is documented that she visited Castle Frankenstein in 1814 when she eloped with Percy. The ruins of Castle Frankenstein can still be seen today.

The Frankenstein monster is one of the most enduring images of Halloween, our most popular images of which come from James Whale's 1931 film and Boris Karloff's unforgettable portrayal. The story has been sequelled and retold in numerous movies, including some memorable Hammer films starring Peter Cushing and, of course, Mel Brooks' hilarious spoof, Young Frankenstein.

Are there any real-life man-made monsters? Not yet. But with our growing knowledge of the human genome, the means to manipulate DNA and our newly acquired ability to clone living creatures... who knows? Just recently it was announced that a company in Melbourne, Australia had succeeded in creating an embryo that is half human, half pig. Why they wanted to do such a thing was not revealed in the news story, but if such creations are now possible, who knows what real-life horrors await us in the near future.

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Trevor Proffitt
         
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A little off topic here, but has anyone seen "Weird Science"? Two kids build their own ideal woman.

We guys like to build stuff.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to design your own woman?

Of course, every guy would design someone pretty, but mine would be a little different. She'd know exactly what she wanted and she'd stick to it, no always change her mind. She's also be more into honesty than in playing games.
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unknown

              
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Oh yah, Kelly labrock was awesome

They also did a TV series, They was a great line in the terminator 2 when they break into the engineers house and Linda Hamilton says something like "you men think you are so creative with your guns and bombs but you have no idea what it is like to create a life."
wish I had the actual quote


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http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,504938,00.html

Real-life Frankenstein who inspired SF

18th century cleric who blinded bats and cut up snails may have been prototype for science fiction

James Meek, science correspondent
Monday June 11, 2001
The Guardian

An 18th century Roman Catholic priest who blinded bats, decapitated snails and brought dried microscopic creatures back to life was the prototype for all subsequent diabolical scientists in literature and film, according to a new investigation.
An Italian researcher claims the priest, Lazzaro Spallanzani, was the model used by Ernst Hoffmann in his 1815 story Der Sandmann, about a scientist who builds a beautiful female robot which drives a young man insane.


Hoffman wrote the story a year before Mary Shelley wrote her Gothic novel Frankenstein, which is often considered the fountainhead of science fiction.
Much later, Der Sandmann inspired the Offenbach opera The Tales Of Hoffman, in which the scientist is renamed Hoffman.

But in the original story, the sinister, manipulative scientist whose cleverness, thirst for knowledge and disregard for the wider good brings woe to the innocent is called Spalanzani - differing from the real-life Spallanzani by just one letter.

In an article in the journal Nature, the Italian researcher Paolo Mazzarello points out that the real Spallanzani, professor of natural history at Pavia University in the late 18th century and a member of Britain's Royal Society, reported that he had obtained "resurrection after death" by adding water to tiny dehydrated animals.

The scientist-priest became disturbed by the metaphysical implications of what he had done, and wrote to Voltaire asking what he thought happened to the animals' souls while they were dead.

"When a man like you announces that he has brought the dead back to life we have to believe him," Voltaire wrote back. "If there is someone, sir, that has the right to explain this mystery, this person is you."

Spallanzani, who died in 1799, cut the heads off snails to see whether they would grow back, discovered that blinded bats could still find their way in the dark, showed that natural chemicals inside the body digested food, and was the first to observe white blood cells.

"It was no surprise that this priest was perceived, for many years after his death, as a mixture of sulphur and holy water, a legendary wizard of experimentation," Dr Mazzarello said.

"His successful programme of research exploring the extreme philosophical boundaries of 18th century science made him a literary symbol of scientific astuteness in Hoffman's tale."

Hoffman played up the dark side of Spallanzani in his story, which is anything but sympathetic to science. He describes his anti-hero walking slowly through an empty room. "His footsteps giving a hollow echo; and his figure had, as the flickering shadows played about him, a ghastly, awful appearance."

But Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art and the author of a forthcoming book about the image of scientists on the big screen, said there were other real-life researchers who could be seen as models for the crazed scientific geniuses of modern film and literature.

Konrad Dippel, a 16th century alchemist who worked in the town of Frankenstein, and Andrew Crosse, the "Wizard of the Quantocks" who troubled and intrigued his neighbours in Somerset with his early electrical experiments, have both been suggested as prototypes for Shelley's scientist hero.

"In a way, the theme goes all the way back to Faust, to the Garden of Eden, or the Greek myth of Pandora's box," Professor Frayling said.

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Trevor Proffitt

         
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Interesting story, I have never heard about this guy before. I'll look him up when I get more time, see what I can find.

Anyway, back to my idea of making your own woman. Would it be so ethically wrong to just get the person you want? Mine would be blonde, with a good figure and a warm personality, all those personaly traits that I find enderearing. There wouldn't be that doubt men and women usually have with one another, you would just know.
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Volitzer

        
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quote:
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Originally posted by Trevor Proffitt:
Interesting story, I have never heard about this guy before. I'll look him up when I get more time, see what I can find.

Anyway, back to my idea of making your own woman. Would it be so ethically wrong to just get the person you want? Mine would be blonde, with a good figure and a warm personality, all those personaly traits that I find enderearing. There wouldn't be that doubt men and women usually have with one another, you would just know.
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Go to eHarmony and you'll find out for yourself.
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unknown

          
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ever see the "The Stepford Wives?"

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Jennifer O'Dell

            
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TRIAL OF BURKE & HARE

One of the most gruesome trials to take place in 19th century Scotland was surely that of the infamous graverobbers William Burke and William Hare.

By day, the two appeared as hardworking Irish immigrants: William Burke even rented out rooms to recent arrivals in Edinburgh. But by night, the pair lurked in dark corners of the city's ancient graveyards, digging up bodies of the recently departed to sell to anatomy instructors in Edinburgh's fast growing medical schools.

In those days, Edinburgh was one of the major centres of medical education in Europe. Dr. Robert Knox of the city's Medical School was one of the most popular anatomists - attracting as many as 500 students per class.

But in early 19th century Scotland, obtaining human cadavers for medical research was not a simple matter. Schools were restricted by laws that allowed the dissection of only one body per year - and it had to be the body of an executed criminal.

Given the law of supply and demand, it was just a matter of time before someone found an illegal way of providing dead humans for dissection. Enter our two enterprising Irish immigrants, William Burke and William Hare. Smelling a profit, the two got together and cooked up a scheme to supply freshly dead bodies to the anatomy schools with "no questions asked".

Burke and Hare were not alone. In fact, as far back as the early 1700s, there were complaints that bodies were being exhumed for the purpose of medical dissection. According to Adam Lyal's "The Trial of the Bodysnatchers", the practise of stealing freshly buried bodies was so rampant that the graverobbers were known as "resurrectionists" for their ability to raise the dead.


This practice so horrified the general public that watchtowers were constructed in some Edinburgh graveyards to protect those recently buried from exhumation. In addition to the towers, protective walls and iron bars can still be seen around some old Edinburgh graves. The Trial of the Bodysnatchers, by Adam Lyal
Burke and Hare were very successful graverobbers indeed. But success soon turned to greed and greed to murder. When they realized profits would increase with more dead bodies, they started murdering hapless victims in Edinburgh's Old Town with their own special form of strangulation and handed the corpses over to local anatomists such as Dr. Knox.
The anatomists who used Burke and Hare's services didn't ask many questions about the corpses that were brought to them at the medical school under the cover of darkness. It was only when suspicious neighbours starting asking about about a missing Irish immigrant named Mrs. Docherty, that the whole scheme began to unravel. Before long, the two graverobbers turned serial killers were up on charges of murdering the old lady and the whole of Britain was riveted to the grisly details of the trial throughout that Christmas and New Year season of 1828.

We will probably never know how many of Burke's and Hare's unsuspecting victims ended up on the anatomy tables of Edinburgh's Medical Schools. They were suspected of murdering between 13 to 30 people, but there was never enough evidence to get a conviction on more than one body - that of the unfortunate Mrs. Docherty.

When the case finally got to trial, Hare turned evidence against Burke, and Burke was found guilty of murder. He was executed on January 29, 1829 and his body was - you guessed it - donated to the Medical School for what they called "useful dissection". Nearly two hundred years after his death, Burke's skeleton remains on display at the University's Medical School.

Ironically, the anatomists to whom Burke and Hare supplied bodies were never brought to trial. Although Dr. Knox was named as the recipient of bodies, he was never charged with any crime.

MMJ, October 1999


http://www.tartans.com/articles/graverobbers1.html
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unknown

                 
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Jennifer

"Ironically, the anatomists to whom Burke and Hare supplied bodies were never brought to trial. Although Dr. Knox was named as the recipient of bodies, he was never charged with any crime."

Typical

While reading this it brought to mind another type of monster not discussed the ghoul

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« Last Edit: April 18, 2007, 11:39:55 pm by unknown » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
Elphias Levi
unknown
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 1603



« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2007, 06:31:17 pm »




 don't like to think about guys eating dead bodies, so I think I'll leave it to someone else to start that thread...
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 Jennifer O'Dell

            
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We need to pump up your Frankenstein topic, Unknown! Doesn't seem fair that we've done so little work with it lately...
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Jennifer O'Dell


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Have to admit, I was getting really into that monster stuff we were all doing...
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unknown

       
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Hi Jennifer
nice to see you

Well I was thinking of doing something on the Golem, because it is so closely resembles the Fankenstein story, A preist brings a stone creature to life or perhaps even the homunculus( alchemist's bringing beings to life.)


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Aphrodite

         
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I've heard of the Golem! It's an old Jewish legend.

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"He who controls others maybe powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.” - Lao Tsu

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Jennifer O'Dell

          
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Hi Unknown,
Hi Karen,

Golem, anything like the little guy in the Lord of the Rings movie..?
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unknown

              
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Jennifer I just love that movie,

Thats right Aphrodite

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Pagan

          
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I can think of a lot of Frankenstein themes for this:

How about something on Herman Munster to start with?

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╔╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╗
☼The Pagan ☼
╚╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╝

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unknown

         
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

Golem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Golem is also the name of an inductive logic programming system. In Pokémon, Golem is a rock-type Pokémon.
A golem (sometimes pronounced goilem), in medieval folklore and from Jewish mythology is an animated being crafted from inanimate material. In modern Hebrew the word golem denotes "fool", "silly", or even "stupid", "clue-less", and "dumb". The name appears to derive from the word gelem, which means 'raw material'.


History
The word golem is used in the Bible and in Talmudic literature to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance. Psalm 139:16 uses the word "gal'mi", meaning "my unshaped form" (in Hebrew, root words are defined by sequences of consonants, ie. glm). Similarly, Golems are used today primarily in metaphor either as brainless lunks or as entities serving man under controlled conditions but enemies in others. Similarly, it is a Yiddish slang insult for someone who is clumsy or slow.

The earliest stories of golems date to early Judaism. They were a creation of those who were very holy and close to God. A very holy person was one who strove to approach God, and in that pursuit would gain some of God's wisdom and power. One of these powers was the creation of life. No matter how holy a person got, however, the being they created would be but a shadow of one created by God. Like Adam, the golem is created from mud. Early on the notion developed that the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak. Having a golem servant was seen as the ultimate symbol of wisdom and holiness, and there are many tales of golems connected to prominent rabbis throughout the Middle Ages.

Other attributes of the golem were gradually added over time. In many tales the Golem is inscribed with magic or religious words that keep it animated. Writing the name of God on its forehead, (or on a clay tablet under its tongue) or writing the word Emet (אמת, 'truth' in the Hebrew language) on its forehead are examples of such words. By erasing the first letter in 'Emet' to form 'Meit' (מת, 'death' in Hebrew) the golem can be deactivated.

The most famous golem narrative involves the Maharal of Prague, a 16th century rabbi. He is reported to have created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto from Anti-Semitic attacks.

The existence of a golem is in most stories portrayed as a mixed blessing. Although not overly intelligent, a golem can be made to perform simple tasks over and over. The problem is one of control or getting it to stop, bearing a resemblance to the story of the broomstick in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

In the late nineteenth century the golem was adopted by mainstream European society. Most notably Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel Der Golem based on the tales of the golem created by Judah Low ben Bezalel. This book inspired a classic set of expressionistic silent movies, Paul Wegener's Golem series, of which especially Golem: How He Came Into the World (also released as The Golem, 1920, USA 1921) is famous. Another famous treatment from the same era is H. Leivick's 1921 Yiddish-language "dramatic poem in eight sections" The Golem.

These tales saw a dramatic change, and some would argue a Christianization, of the golem. Christianity, far more than Judaism, has long had a deep concern with humanity getting too close to God. The golem thus became a creation of overambitious and overreaching mystics, who would inevitably be punished for their blasphemy, very similar to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the alchemical homunculus. The Golem has also been considered by some to be an early android, further divorcing it from its roots.

In 2005, the story of the Golem was returned to its Jewish roots, as a new comic strip in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth depicted the Golem as a government-funded superhero protecting Israel from its domestic and existential difficulties.



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unknown


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Hi Pagan

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several species of small furry animals gathered together and grooving with a pict in a cave

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Jennifer O'Dell

                 
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I don't think I met anyone who didn't like that movie...
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rockessence

        
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Two Frankenstiens walk into a bar and order drinks. The bartender serves them.

What did the bartender serve them?

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"Illigitimi non carborundum!"
All knowledge is to be used in the manner that will give help and assistance to others, and the desire is that the laws of the Creator be manifested in the physical world. E.Cayce 254-17

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unknown

        
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The director of "Lord of Rings" is doing King Kong, I saw the previews it looks like its going to be totally Awesome.

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unknown

                
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You got me Rocky

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several species of small furry animals gathered together and grooving with a pict in a cave

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Pagan

               
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A couple of zombies?

I should know this one!

Hi to you, too Unknown!

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╔╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╗
☼The Pagan ☼
╚╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╝

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Jennifer O'Dell

                   
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I can't wait for that King Kong movie, too, course I think I'd rather he also did the Hobbit.

Hi, Pagan...
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unknown

                     
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Why two Frankensteins?

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Jennifer O'Dell

              
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And I don't know the answer either...
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unknown

                 
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I would rather he did something from the Silmurilion By Tolkein, He may still do the Hobbit but I think career wise he had to do something besides another Tolkein piece.


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Jennifer O'Dell


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I think he said he wants to do the Hobbit, they just haven't got the rights or something like that...
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unknown


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Jennifer thats Cool

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« Last Edit: April 17, 2007, 12:27:07 am by Aphrodite » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
Elphias Levi
unknown
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 1603



« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2007, 06:32:13 pm »



Ares God of War


You want Frankenstein jokes? I got'em!

After forty years of marriage, Frankenstein and the Bride of
Frankenstein came to a standstill in their love life. Each night
Frankenstein would come home from work, eat his dinner, and sit in
front of the television set until he fell asleep. Dissatisfied with
this arrangement, the Bride decided to see a therapist.
"He's never in the mood," complained the Bride.
"Try a romantic candlelight dinner," suggested the therapist.
The next day, the Bride returned to the therapist with a frown on her face.
"He's still not in the mood," she complained.
"This time," the therapist recommended, "try something more
seductive. Put on some sexy lingerie and lure him into the bedroom."
But the Bride returned to the therapist the following day complaining
that her monster of a husband was still not in the mood. As a final
piece of advice, the therapist said, "You should try to re-create the
moment that first sparked your romance."
The next day the Bride returned with a huge grin on her face. "Thank
you so much," she said to the therapist. "Last night, I forced
Frankenstein to come outside in the middle of the lightening storm.
And right there, in our backyard, he made love to me like it was our
very first time."
"Making love in a lightening storm put him in the mood?" asked the therapist.
"Well," giggled the Bride of Frankenstein, "I tied a kite to his ****."
http://sharon02745.tripod.com/sharonsadultjokesonwebnow/id2.html

HAHAHAH !!!!

Yeah, Pagan...2 ZOMBIES and a bowl of NUTS..!

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"Illigitimi non carborundum!"
All knowledge is to be used in the manner that will give help and assistance to others, and the desire is that the laws of the Creator be manifested in the physical world. E.Cayce 254-17

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Aries, God of War

               
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So Pagan got it right, way to go, Pagan.
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rockessence

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HAHAHA HAH!.....a bowl of NUTS for their bolts!

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"Illigitimi non carborundum!"
All knowledge is to be used in the manner that will give help and assistance to others, and the desire is that the laws of the Creator be manifested in the physical world. E.Cayce 254-17

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unknown

                      
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Do not underestimate that girl
She is smarter than all of the rest of us combined

I am egg man I am the walrus coo coo ca choo


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Jennifer O'Dell

                    
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Maybe she just knows a lot more jokes, she sure is cracking a lot of them.
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unknown


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seriously

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unknown


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if I = can't have you I don't want nobody baby
I f I can;t have you...

F/*&^*


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Jennie McGrath

                   
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Sorry about your mom, Unknown, she's in my prayers, too. Hang in there, buddy.
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rockessence

                    
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Unky,

Get yourself a piece of rose quartz....check with metaphysical bookstores or rockshops or bead stores. Any small piece will do. Also, agate for trauma. It works like the flower remedy "Rescue Remedy".

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"Illigitimi non carborundum!"
All knowledge is to be used in the manner that will give help and assistance to others, and the desire is that the laws of the Creator be manifested in the physical world. E.Cayce 254-17

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Jennie McGrath


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Action robot to copy human brain

It will not look like a standard robot - it will be desk-based with a robotic arm and cameras for eyes

Prof Mark Lee
How the human brain makes certain decisions are to be adapted to build a new robot which will think for itself.
Aberystwyth University academics are working on the machine which they hope will recognise objects and retrieve them using an arm and cameras for eyes.

However, it is unclear at present what it could be used for ultimately.

Scientists said they aimed to "unravel" how a part of the brain worked and would then use that information to develop the machine.


Led by Professor Mark Lee, the team from Aberystwyth is joined by academics from six other universities on the five-year project.

Financial backing worth some £1.9m has come from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council - Aberystwyth's share is £470,000.

Most robots are programmed to make certain decisions, but are unable to think for themselves.

According to Prof Lee, the project's purpose was to try to "unravel" the way in which the brain worked and to then build a robot that could "think" for itself.


Prof Lee will be working with other universities on the project

"Humans and animals adapt their actions according to what surrounds them, and are able to do several things at the same time and learn from their mistakes," he said.

"With this project we hope to solve this problem of multi-tasking by using our knowledge of how the brain works."

The robot would also be able to detect items, assess their significance and prioritise, focusing on the most important.

However, Prof Lee said that it would not look like a standard robot but be desk based with a robotic arm and cameras for eyes.

"All these capabilities will be combined within an overall control system that makes use of a central selection mechanism, just as we believe occurs in the brain," he added.

"Our understanding of how the brain works is also key to the next stage which will involve teaching the robot how to react to things that change around it.

"For example, something which could potentially distract it from the task it has been set. It will also be able to learn from its mistakes just as humans do.

"Once the robot has been constructed we will then stand back and ask the question 'what general features of the model gave it its ability to integrate its behaviours successfully?'

"By doing this we hope to be able to transfer our work into a wider range of robots designed for many different tasks."

The full project team is made up of mathematicians, control engineers, computer modellers and neuroscientists from universities including Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford and Cambridge.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/4495257.stm
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Pagan

                   
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quote:
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Originally posted by unknown:
Do not underestimate that girl
She is smarter than all of the rest of us combined

I am egg man I am the walrus coo coo ca choo
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Damn straight, Unknown!

And you're pretty dang smart yourself for recognizing that!

Let's get back to our damn monster topics!
Don't forget...Halloween is coming..!
 

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╔╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╗
☼The Pagan ☼
╚╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╪╝

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Volitzer

                 
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I'm the kid on the block...
with my head made in rock...
and I aint got nobody.

I'm the state of the art...
got a brain a la cart...
I make the babies cry
I aint one of the crowd
I aint one of the guys
they just avoid me
they run and they hide

are my colors too bright?Huh
are my eyes set too wide?Huh

I spend my whole life burning, turning

(thunder)

I'm a teenage frankenstein
...the local freak with the twisted mind
I'm a teenage frankenstein
...theses aint my hands and these legs aint mine

got a synthetic face
got some scars and a brace
my hands are rough and bloody
I walk into the night
women faint at the sight
I aint no cutie pie
I can't walk in the day
I must walk in the night
stay in the shadows
stay out of the light

are my shoulder too wide???
is my head screwed on tight???

I spend my whole life burning, turning

(thunder)

I'm a teenage frankenstein
...the local freak with the twisted mind
I'm a teenage frankenstein
...these aint my arms and these legs aint mine

(guitar solo)

I aint one of the crowd
I aint one of the guys
they just avoid me
they run and they hide

are my colors to bright???
are my eyes set too wide???

I spend my whole life burning, turning

I'm a teenage frankenstein
...the local freak with the twisted mind
I'm a teenage frankenstein
...these aint my hands and these legs aint mine

I'm a teenage frankenstein
...the local freak with the twisted mind
I'm a teenage frankenstein
...these aint my arms and these legs aint mine

   

Alice Cooper
"Teenage Frankenstein"
Constrictor
MCA Records
See more artist info at www.cdnow.com


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unknown


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Cool Volitizer

Why thank you Pagan

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« Last Edit: April 17, 2007, 12:29:00 am by Aphrodite » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
Elphias Levi
unknown
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 1603



« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2007, 06:35:44 pm »

   


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Cool Volitizer

Why thank you Pagan

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Jean Starling

                    
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Frankenstein's origin traced in new drama


By Frederick M. Winship
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL


New York, NY, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A fascinating new off-Broadway drama with a superb cast traces the origin of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel, "Frankenstein," to a Swiss holiday shared with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and several members of their intimate circle.


The time is the summer of 1816 and the weather is stormy on the shores of Lake Geneva, where one of the notorious house parties in literary history is in forced confinement in Byron's rented Villa Diodati by incessant rain. Byron has offered temporary shelter to the Shelleys, who are not yet married but have a son, and they have accepted.

The other characters in "The Frankenstein Summer," Catherine Bush's finely crafted play at the Phil Bosakowski Theater, are a discarded mistress of Byron's, Claire Clairmont, who is pregnant by him, Byron's live-in physician, Polidori, and the poet's butler, Fletcher. All but Fletcher are enmeshed emotionally, and even same-sex longings are suggested on the part of Byron and Shelley.

Byron, already a noted poet, has been exiled from England by a court action taken by his wife as a result of his incestuous affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. He is not exactly looking for another attachment but is attracted to Mary Shelley, who for her part seems more interested in promoting Claire as his next wife than in Byron's unsubtle attentions. Mary also has won the puppy-dog devotion of Polidori.

Everyone seems to be writing something, except the budding poet Shelley who has writer's block and has taken to doping with laudanum and excessive drinking of sherry. Almost always in a foul mood, he tends to rudeness while the others in the party cling to a modicum of courtesy in an attempt to smooth over a difficult situation. For amusement, Byron suggests they each write a ghost story with Fletcher as judge of the best story.

Claire wins the contest because Fletcher, a wise servant, finds her intimidating, but the idea of writing about the supernatural has excited Mary's imagination. She confides to Byron that she has had a dream of a soulless monster patched together out of body parts of corpses and then brought to life, and he encourages her to develop the idea in a novel.

She is writing furiously as the curtain falls on a manuscript that will be published two years later with the title "Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus," perhaps the most widely known frightmare novel. It has been the inspiration for nearly 20 U.S., British, and Japanese movies including "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Son of Frankenstein."

Bush's dialogue for her self-consciously intellectual cast of characters is witty and has an overlay of the conversational brilliance credited to the dandified British Regency era. The play is well-paced, with never a sluggish moment, and beautifully edited so that there is not a single scene that doesn't contribute to the hothouse mood that incubates the action. It makes one want to see the playwright's next work for the theater, "The Other Side of the Mountain," which will premiere at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va., next month.

Mary Shelley is the key figure in the play, charming and flirtatious and brave enough to quote to Byron a description of himself as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." She is the daughter of William Godwin, a radical philosopher and writer who influenced Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer in the feminist movement. Claire Clairmont was Godwin's stepdaughter by a second marriage and one of Mary's best friends.

Abby Royle plays Mary as a charming young woman not unaware of her attractions to men and delightfully naive in her enthusiastic aspirations to make a name for herself as a writer. Brad Malow makes Shelley an attractive man despite his unhappiness with himself and his unfounded jealousy of Mary, whom he will marry later in the year after his wife dies.

Marc Geller, who both directed and acted in the play, is an actor of leonine appearance, brilliant in his characterization of Byron and a game actor who limps around on the side of one foot all evening as the clubfooted poet must have walked. He is particularly good at assuming Byron's superior airs while revealing his generosity of spirit. It is one of the theater season's finest performances.

Brendan McMahon's sympathetic but amusing Polidori is outstanding. The physician is an incurable romantic who says he is writing a love poem to a "woman of Geneva" to cover up the true object of his passion, Mary. As Claire, Tracey Gilbert gives the impression of a strong woman who is not completely likable, and Bill Roulet makes Fletcher the perfect servant, always one step ahead of Byron in making his guests comfortable.

On an incredibly small stage, a few antique pieces of furniture, a beautifully designed faux marble floor, and a few elegant window draperies make for a handsome interior designed by Aaron Mastin and lighted by Stephen Arnold. Dennis Ballard's period costumes are elegant without being overwhelming except for the wardrobe designed for Polidori, whose tastes reflect a Beau Brummel-interest in male plumage.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050224-070059-3642r.htm
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|   
 
Jean Starling


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The Origin of a Myth:
Mary Shelley's Novel Frankenstein

Portrait of Mary Shelley The origin of Frankenstein is almost as mysterious and exciting as the novel itself. It all began back in the summer of 1816 at the famed Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary Shelley (1797-1851) spent most of that summer together with her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori, Byron's physician. Inspired by a reading of the Fantasmagoriana, a collection of German ghost stories, on June 16 they decided to try their hands on supernatural stories themselves.
The first one to come up with a story was Polidori, who began his now famous tale The Vampyre. Its main protagonist Lord Ruthven was supposedly modeled on Lord Byron. However, Mary Shelley was not that quick in creating her first piece of literature. Initially, she suffered from some kind of writer's block and produced nothing so far until one day she had (or claimed to have) a sort of vision that finally inspired her to write Frankenstein. She described this vision in the preface of the novel:



"I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination unbidden, possessed and guided me.. I saw with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, - the pale student of unhallowed arts standing before the thing he had put together, I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion... frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror stricken.... He (the artist) sleeps but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes."


A couple of days later, Mary Shelley finally began to write her own ghost story that would later become chapter IV of Frankenstein. She completed the novel in 1817 and the first edition was published in 1818. A brief summary is available here.


But what exactly was it that Shelley wanted to express with Frankenstein ? Does she condemn the protagonist Victor Frankenstein for his hubris or does she approve of his deeds? Due to the fact that throughout the whole novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley never explicitly comments on her position, Frankenstein is an open invitation for all sorts of theories and interpretations. The following section is dedicated to these questions and presents a number of possible different interpretations of Frankenstein based on the work of several critics.


These different readings of Frankenstein, on the one hand conservative criticism on science, on the other hand the Promethean believe in the unlimited progress of science, are based on the three different narrators of the novel. Two contradicting points of view are expressed in the narratives of Frankenstein and the Monster, whereas Walton's frame narrative basically supports Victor Frankenstein's point of view. Therefore the value of Mary Shelley's novel lies not in presenting a clear morale but in encouraging the readers to make up their own.

Victor Frankenstein's original reasons for creating life from dead parts are noble. His driving force is the desire to help mankind conquer death and diseases. But when he finally reaches the goal of his efforts and sees his creature and its ugliness, he turns away from it and flees the monstrosity he has created. From that moment on he tries to suppress the consequences of his experiments and wants to escape them by working in other sciences. Victor even withdraws from his friends and psychological changes are visible.
Mary Shelley seems not to condemn the act of creation but rather Frankenstein's lack of willingness to accept the responsibility for his deeds. His creation only becomes a monster at the moment his creator deserts it (Weber 1994: 24). Insofar Frankenstein warns of the careless use of science, which is still an important issue, even 200 years after the book was written. Taken into consideration what many inventions of the last 50 years brought upon mankind, one must assume that many scientists still do not care much. (E.g. the splitting of the atom was turned into nuclear bombs and the invention of the computer resulted in an eerie dehumanisation of western society). Most scientists seem to be like Victor Frankenstein, who finished his work in the prospect of achieving fame. Only when he realizes the repulsiveness of his creation, Victor comes to senses. Intended as a warning, Victor tells his story to the polar explorer Walton:

"I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow." (Shelley 1992: 51-52)


In his corrupting striving for knowledge Victor Frankenstein is compared to Prometheus, as the novel's subtitle "The Modern Prometheus" suggests. It is a typical example of "hubris", where a character is doomed because he transgresses his limits and rises up against some sort of authority, in Greek mythology usually a divine authority. The mythological Prometheus rebelled against the Gods when he gave fire to humankind; Frankenstein is a rebel against nature when he tries not only to find the secret of life but also to remove life's defects (cf. Gassenmeier 1994: 42).
But even more so, in Victor Frankenstein both aspects of the Prometheus myth are embodied: the transgressive (hubris/rebellion against authority) and the creative (Prometheus also molded mankind from pieces of clay). Therefore Frankenstein is truly a drama of the romantic promethean hero who fails in his attempt to help mankind.


Feminist literary theory claims that Frankenstein's act of creation is not only a sin against God/nature. It is also an act against the "female principle", which includes natural procreation as one of its central aspects. The Monster, the result of male arrogance, is the enemy and destroyer of the eternal female principle (cf. Markus 1994: 61). The Monster is the child of an unnatural act of procreation in which woman has become unnecessary. The male, who is the executive power in a patriarchal system, has deprived woman of her most natural function because he is now able to create children without female participation. The present discussion about genetic engineering and human cloning shows that this is not a far-fetched utopia.

At least in his subconscious Frankenstein must have realised his crime against the "female principle", which becomes clear in the following symbolic dream. In the night after the reanimation of the Monster Victor has a nightmare in which he kills his mother and his fiancée:
Frankenstein creates the fiend - illustration by
Bernie Wrightson (© 1977)


"I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. " (Shelley 1992: 57)

At the same time Frankenstein is not willing to fully take the role of the mother of his "child". Immediately after its birth he leaves his child and thereby evades his parental duty to care for the child.


Walton, constructed as a parallel to Frankenstein, is kept from continuing his dangerous journey by Frankenstein's cautionary tale. But in contrast to Walton Frankenstein's character remains somehow ambivalent. Although he feels remorse for his deeds he ends his tale with a rather strange statement:

"Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed." (Shelley 1992: 210)

Victor Frankenstein has given up his attempts to create artificial life. But he still hopes that someone else may successfully continue his works. This last sentence makes all his warnings look like a farce. And it also brings up the assumption that Mary Shelley really did not condemn the Promethean striving of her hero. Probably she was not against scientific progress but only wanted to warn of carelessness in science.


A totally different position is represented in the Monster's narrative, the central part of the novel. If only this narrative is considered, the Monster appears to be an almost perfect creation (apart from his horrible appearance), who appears often more human than the humans themselves. He is benevolent (he saves a little child; he helps the De Lacey family collecting firewood), intelligent and cultured (he learns to read and talk in a very short time; he reads Goethe's Werther, Milton's Paradise Lost and Plutarch's works). The only reason why he fails is his repulsive appearance. After having been rejected and attacked again and again by everyone he encounters only because of his horrible physiognomy, the Monster, alone and left on his own, develops a deadly hatred against his creator Frankenstein and against all of mankind. Therefore only society is to blame for the dangerous threat to mankind that the Monster has become. If people had adopted the Monster into their society instead of being biased against him and mistreating him he would have become a valuable member of the human society due to his outstanding physical and intellectual powers.

Mary Shelley's husband, the romantic poet Percy B. Shelley, saw Frankenstein as a summing up of one of the central ideas of the enlightenment movement. The moral qualities and faults of a human being are mainly the products of his/her private and social environment (cf. Gassenmeier 1994: 28). Everything we become is simply a question of nature vs. nurture. In his review "On Frankenstein" (1818) Percy B. Shelley wrote:

"Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, though indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Human nature. In this the direct morale of the book consists, and it is perhaps the most important and of the most universal application of any morale that can be enforced by example - Treat a person ill and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn; let one being be selected for whatever cause as the refuse of his kind - divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations - malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that too often in society those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments are branded by some accident with scorn, and changed by neglect and solitude of heart into a scourge and a curse." (Shelley 1954: 308)

For Percy Shelley the problem does not seem to be Frankenstein's promethean transgression because danger for mankind is not rooted in science but in society itself. In this context Frankenstein's final words become quite clear: Someone else should continue his experiments and remove the creature's visible defects, in other words assemble a creature with a more beautiful appearance, which would be accepted by society more easily. If this could be achieved, the result would be the perfect artificial human being.


At this point other critics (cf. Gassenmeier 1994: 43) continue and read Frankenstein in a different context. To them the book works as a harsh criticism on religion. The horrible physiognomy of the Monster is only a result of Frankestein's hurry and anxiety caused by his awareness of committing a sin against God. Because of this unrest he uses inadequate materials and assembles them too quickly. It implies that a scientist can only work for the benefit of mankind if he breaks with the church and its values. This reading of Frankenstein may have been influenced by Percy Shelley's pamphlet "The Necessity of Atheism" (1810), where he states that a reasoning human being has to deny the existence of God due to a lack of proofs. However, one might easily share my opinion that this interpretation of Frankenstein is a bit far-fetched. Since Victor Frankenstein is not at all a professional surgeon he cannot be expected to create a perfect human being out of partly rotten body parts, especially not with the kind of instruments, assistance and funding he uses.


In her preface to Frankenstein Mary Shelley admits that her main goal was simply to write a ghost story. She got the idea for what she later called her "hideous progeny" during the legendary summer of 1816, which she spent at Lake Geneva in Switzerland together with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori. Inspired by Fantasmagoriana, a French translation of German Gothic tales, they held some kind of ghost story competition where Mary Shelley invented her story of Frankenstein.

But the classification of Frankenstein as a ghost story, Gothic novel or horror novel is not fully adequate, considering the following facts: It contains no supernatural apparitions such as ghosts, witches, devils, demons or sorcerers. In Frankenstein all "diabolical agency has been replaced by human, natural and scientific powers" (Botting 1996, 103). Other typical Gothic elements, e.g. ruined castles, graveyards and charnel houses, appear only briefly or in the distance. And unlike most Gothic novels Frankenstein is set in the 18th rather than in the 15th century. Shelley also abandoned the simple good-evil scheme of the Gothic novel. Neither Frankenstein nor the Monster are one hundred percent good or evil. Instead they are both highly ambivalent characters. Frankenstein is rather a kind of novel German literary critics call "Entwicklungsroman", a form of the novel showing the development of an individual's character. Both Victor and his creation change during the novel as a consequence of their relationship. Furthermore, one could argue that it shows the Monster's development from earliest childhood to adulthood. And by making its protagonist hero as well as victim Frankenstein is clearly set in the context of Romanticism.


The Frankenstein monster as a symbol for cloning: Cartoon on stem cell research by Dick Wright (© 2001)

But since one of its main topics is a scientific discovery, Frankenstein could equally be called a precursor of the science fiction novel. The artificially created Monster is often seen as a foreshadowing of recent scientific developments like test-tube babies, robots and organ transplantation. The Monster may also be interpreted as "a symbol of the ambiguous nature of the machine" (Baldick 1990: 7) or as a symbol of modern technology.

http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/frankenstein-novel.htm
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unknown

       
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What a great essay, I particularly liked this quote.

"Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, though indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistibly from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Human nature. In this the direct morale of the book consists, and it is perhaps the most important and of the most universal application of any morale that can be enforced by example - Treat a person ill and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn; let one being be selected for whatever cause as the refuse of his kind - divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations - malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that too often in society those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments are branded by some accident with scorn, and changed by neglect and solitude of heart into a scourge and a curse." (Shelley 1954: 308) "

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several species of small furry animals gathered together and grooving with a pict in a cave

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Jennifer O'Dell

               
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Wonder if people will ever be able to make their own Frankenstein monster...
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Jennifer O'Dell

              
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« Last Edit: April 17, 2007, 12:33:03 am by Aphrodite » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
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« Reply #6 on: April 16, 2007, 02:46:49 am »

Nice stuff, Unknown, and it sure brings back memories.  Too bad we can't just move the whole thread over here from AR. It didn't deserve to have all our hard work and it never appreciated it anyway.

Wow, it occurs to me that practically everyone who posted here in this thread is also now over here!

Jennifer
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« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2007, 02:49:19 am »

Hi Jennifer

Its kind of fun to read this stuff, we were a lively crowd. The only one that I see in the thread that isn't here is Ares.

Oh and trevor too...
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"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
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« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2007, 09:52:36 pm »

Cool stuff!  Trevor actually has been here, he has a thread in the dinosaur section.  There's so many dang threads here it's hard to fine everyone! 

That's why it's good we can all meet together after work for some coffee!
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« Reply #9 on: April 17, 2007, 12:22:32 am »

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« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2007, 12:39:20 am »

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« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2007, 12:43:30 am »

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« Reply #12 on: April 17, 2007, 12:47:33 am »

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Using rocks and minerals to heal the earth and us.


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« Reply #13 on: April 17, 2007, 01:15:26 am »






Marty Feldman


A post-coital smoke...




Dr.F: Would you mind telling me whose brain i did put in?

Igor: And you won't be angry?

Dr.F: I will not be angry!

Igor: Abbe...someone.

Dr.F: Abbe someone? Abbe who?

Igor: AbbeNormal.

Dr.F: AbbeNormal!

Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.

Dr.F: Are you saying that i put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, 54 inch wide, gorilla? [hysterical, grabs Igor by neck and lifts up and down off the floor] Is that what you're telling me?













   


Gene Hackman cameo


« Last Edit: April 17, 2007, 02:01:13 am by rockessence » Report Spam   Logged

ILLIGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

Thus ye may find in thy mental and spiritual self, ye can make thyself just as happy or just as miserable as ye like. How miserable do ye want to be?......For you GROW to heaven, you don't GO to heaven. It is within thine own conscience that ye grow there.

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« Reply #14 on: April 17, 2007, 03:45:15 am »



Cool pictures Aphrodite...

Which ones are from the illustrator you where talking about?

***


Hey Rocki

Young Frankenstein what I great flick...I noticed Rocky Horror Picture Show in there too, I think...


***

Hi Jennie

I think its great we have the coffee shop now too...
« Last Edit: April 18, 2007, 10:56:46 pm by unknown » Report Spam   Logged

"There exists an agent, which is natural and divine, material and spiritual, a universal plastic mediator, a common receptical of the fluid vibrations of motion and the images of forms, a fluid, and a force, which can be called the Imagination of Nature..."
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