Literary Context Flashcards
Frankenstein is subtitled “The Modern Prometheus” - why?
Novel has clear themes/links to the creation of man, the dangers of defying God/tradition and how extreme knowledge can be dangerous for someone and the people around them
Who does Victor symbolise and why?
Prometheus
Both steal knowledge that (man) wasn’t suppose to have from the rulers of the universe
Victors defying of tradition/God’s nature ends badly for him - same for Prometheus
Briefly outline Prometheus myth
Prometheus created humans (out of clay) and cared for them
Zeus banned humans from fire after being giving bad meat during sacrifices
Prometheus defied Zeus by stealing fire and giving it to humanity
Humans got warmth and comfort from this and it allowed them to develop and dominate the mortal world
Prometheus was punished for eternity by being chained to a mountain and having a regenerative liver eaten everyday by an eagle (eternal agony)
What is Paradise Lost
A long poem written by John Milton
Explores the fall of man, the temptation of Adam and Eve and the fallen angel : Satan and both’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Story is about mans fall from innocence to painful knowledge (like FRANKENSTIEN)
How does Victor mirror aspects of Paradise Lost
In a way he ‘play’s the role of God by creating life
He also mirrors the Satan as he’s an archangel who is punished for his arrogance, vanity and thirst for forbidden knowledge that results in the monster’s creation
Like Satan, Victor appropriates God’s role as a creator
When was the Gothic genre popularised
1760s onward
What is Gothic
the Gothic can be characterised by “exploration of social values, prescriptions and proscriptions, concern with good and evil, and questions regarding the boundaries between what is human, monstrous, natural, unnatural, supernatural and divine”
What are Gothic features
Wild landscapes and ruined or grotesque buildings, desolate landscapes
Religious settings
Sensibility (the cult of emotion) and sudden shifts in emotion
Excess and extremity
Supernatural and ghostly
Imagery of darkness, shadows and decay
Isolation and loneliness
Horror and terror
Sex and sexuality
Blurring of distinctions between sanity and insanity
Multiple narrators
Crime and lawlessness
Absolute power
Stock characters – absent mother, helpless heroine, the villain, the lover
The outsider
The devilish
