MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

 

The monster has always been the true subject of the Frankenstein story, and Kenneth Branagh’s retelling understands that. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” has all of the usual props of the Frankenstein films, brought to a fever pitch: the dark and stormy nights, the lightning bolts, the charnel houses of spare body parts, the laboratory where Victor Frankenstein stirs his steaming cauldron of life.  Read here. 

https://fsharetv.co/movie/mary-shelley's-frankenstein-episode-1-tt0109836

MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN - 5^C LINGUISTICO

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2014/08/mary-shelley-s-frankenstein.html

https://www.iispandinipiazza.edu.it/mary-shelley.pdf

THE GOTHIC NOVEL

The first Gothic fiction appeared with works like Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765), Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk (1796), which opposed 18th-century “rationalism” with scenes of mystery, horror, and wonder. Gothic was a designation derived from architecture, and it carried connotations of rough and primitive grandeur. 

The atmosphere of a Gothic novel was expected to be dark, tempestuous, ghostly, full of madness, outrage, superstition, and the spirit of revenge.  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which maintains its original popularity and even notoriety, has in overplus the traditional Gothic ingredients, with its weird God-defying experiments and its monster. 

Easy targets for satire, the early Gothic romances died of their own extravagances of plot, but Gothic atmospheric devices continued to haunt the fiction of such major writers as the Brontë sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even Charles Dickens in Bleak House and Great Expectations. In the second half of the 20th century, the term was applied to paperback romances having the same kind of themes and trappings similar to the originals.

Gothic fiction asks to be considered as ingenious entertainment; the pity and terror are not aspects of a cathartic process, but transient emotions to be enjoyed for their own sake.

Read here.

https://research.dom.edu/gothicliterature/historyandkeyelements

https://www.invaluable.com/blog/elements-of-gothic-literature/

READING MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley's famous Gothic novel is considered a landmark work and every decade brings a new interpretation. Here is a selection - some include plot details,

Read here.

https://student.iedl.ir/Four_Corners/Four_Corners_2nd/FC3C/Frankenstein.pdf

THE GIRL WHO WROTE FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Two years later, she published her most famous novel, Frankenstein. She wrote several other books, including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826), the autobiographical Lodore (1835) and the posthumously published Mathilde. She died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, in London, England.  Read more here.

MARY SHELLEY

Mary Shelley is a 2017 romantic period-drama film directed by Haifaa al-Mansour and written by Emma Jensen. The plot follows Mary Shelley's first love and her romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which inspired her to write her seminal novel Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley was a woman working in a man’s world, creating an entirely new genre of writing. Read here and here.

“We wanted to portray a strong woman who is willing to step out of line and find her own voice.” 

Haifaa al-Mansour 

FRANKENSTEIN ~ 5^C LINGUISTICO

Mary Shelley and the Birth of Science Fiction is a very interesting lecture transcript about Frankenstein. It is commonly classified as a Gothic novel, but it is also considered  an early example of science fiction.

Here you can find a PowerPoint presentation to revise the novel.

FICTION DURING THE ROMANTIC AGE - MARY SHELLEY

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was the only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Their high expectations of her future are, perhaps, indicated by their blessing her upon her birth with both their names. She was born on 30 August 1797 in London. The labor was not difficult, but complications developed with the afterbirth. Despite expert attention, her mother sickened from placental infection and died eleven days after her birth, on 10 September. Continue reading here.

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" 

Revising Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" 

REVISING MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein is a unique novel in the canon of English literature. The novel seeks to find the answers to questions that no doubt perplexed Mary Shelley and the readers of her time. Mary Shelley is intensely aware of the concern that technology was advancing at a rate that dizzied the mind of early 18th century readers. Perhaps this novel is addressing that issue of advances created by men, but which fly in the face of "natural" elements and divine plans. Continue reading here.

Click here to find useful material to revise the novel.

MARY SHELLEY' S FRANKENSTEIN

Here you  can download and read the eBook of Mary Shelley's novel; you can listen to the full audio-book of the novel as well. Click here to read a review of the book.