THE ENLIGHTMENT AND ENLIGHTMENT Flashcards
Characteristics of Romanticism (9)
- appreciation of nature,
- emotion over reasons & senses,
- human personality,
- preoccupation w/ genius, hero, and exceptional figure, creators creative spirit is more important that formal rules,
- emphasis on imagination to lead to spiritual truth,
- interest in fold culture, national and ethnic cultural origins,
- interest in monstrous, diseased, and even satanic,
- some may be melancholy or haunted but it was optimistic about human capacity of goodness.
How does Frankenstein show an appreciation of Nature?
- throughout novel, the scenes of nature play an important role. Seasons reflect the mood of the characters (ex: winter creature is mad and burns cottage).
Also when Henry and Victor travel throughout England the description of Nature in Henry’s opinion makes nature feel as if it is something wonderful and good.
How does Frankenstein show emotions over reasons & senses?
- When the creature kills William.
- He was not thinking at the time and because of his strong emotions of previous events, he didn’t hesitate to kill Him.
- Burning down the cottage because the family was terrified of Creature.
How does Frankenstein show interest in monstrous, diseased, and satanic things?
- Victor being interested in creating a human.
Romanticism
- A literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in Europe in the 18th century and lasting roughy until the mid-19th century
What did Romanticism Emphasize
- individual, subjective, irrational, imaginative, personal, spontaneous emotional, visionary, and transcendental
Frame story, Victor’s Tale, Creature’s Tale Felix’s Tale,
a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a (name ex in Frankenstein)
Frame story/parallel narrative in Frankenstein
- Robert Walton’s letters, Victor Frankenstein’s Tale, (which also includes creature and Felix’s tale).
How do these stories and narrative combine and give new meaning to the book?
-how dangerous the pursuit of knowledge can be: all characters like Robert and victor story all had a tendency to want to accelerate beyond human social norms.
-Rober walton: In the letters he tells, margret that victor warned him not to have a strong thirst fo rknowledge like he did. Walton wanted to explore the farthest to the North Pole anyone has gone
-Frankenstein was so interested in the making of the human body that he decided to creature a creature that soon shapes the tale of the novel.
-Ambition all lead to negative consequences of three characters
-Robert: lead him to be stuck w/ his crew on ice and isolated from most ppl
-Victor: isolated from outside world due to his ambition of wanting to create a human
-Monster: wanting to learn to read and write turned him into a hostile creature
-Shelley shows by these narratives how the causes of unbalancing the natural world can lead to caos, this theme conveys what most writers in the romantic era thought of bc of the industrial revolution.
-shows the effects of man trying to play god by science
Parallel narrative, Robert Walton’s letters and victor’s story
- The telling of two separate stories that either converge or compliment each other in some way
Morality of Victor Frankenstein
- His values between what is right and wrong is blurred.
- The entire creation of the creature is a morally wrong thing to do in my opinion, but the whole process in Victor’s eyes seems an acceptable thing to participate in.
- Essentially, he is trying to make a human like how God creates man.
- -also very cruel to just abandon creature
Morality of the Creature
- he creature’s morals in the beginning seem acceptable, and even believes that he will do no human any harm, but his emotions take over his thoughts causing him to not distinguish right from wrong. He acts as if he was innocent but his action are the complete opposite. He murdered many people within the novel such as William and Henry. He even burned down a cottage
