1. Frankenstein and the Fragmented Body Presented by: Maura Kate Costello and Margaret Stokman

2. Overview: Biography Contexts Reading Experience

3. Biography

4. Mary’s Parents: William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

5. 1797 (Aug) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is born (Sept) Mary Wollstonecraft dies

6. 1814 (Jul) Mary Godwin, at 16 years old, elopes with P.B. Shelley a few months after they meet 1815 (Feb) Clara, first daughter, is born prematurely and dies soon after

7. 1816 (Jan) William, first son, is born (Jun) Frankenstein first conceived (Oct) Fanny Imlay commits suicide (Dec) Harriet Shelley commits suicide (Dec) Mary and Percy officially marry

8. 1817 (May) Clara Everina, second daughter is born 1818 (Jan) Frankenstein is published anonymously 1818 (Sept) Clara Everina dies 1819 (Jun) William dies (Nov) Percy Florence, second son, is born 1822 (Jul) Percy Bysshe Shelley dies 1831 Frankenstein re-published 1823-1836 Valperga, The Last Man and Falkner published 1851 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley dies after long illness

9. Contexts

10. France 1789-99 French Revolution 1793-94 Reign of Terror; Louis XVI executed 1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars England’s reaction: political conservatism– Edmund Burke

11. Philosophical and Literary Influences Vitalism Rousseau, Discourse on Origin of Inequality Milton, Paradise Lost Prometheus

12. Literary Structure and Framework Epistolary novel Frame narrative and the question of narrative authority Fragmented body, fragmented text Plot Overview

13. Central Ideas Freedom Desire and Curiosity Solitude and Companionship -Creature-Creator relationship Fragmentation

14. A Reading Experience of Frankenstein

15. “warning about the effects of letting oneself be controlled by ambition and loosing control over its own possibilities.” (Mary Shelley) Guiding Quotes "I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade, than an artists occupied by his favorite employment.” (Victor)

16. "You have burdened your memory with exploded systems, and useless names.” (Victor’s Professor at University) “Two years passed in which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which I hoped to make.” (Victor)

17. “He is often overcome by gloom, and then he sits by himself, and tires to overcome all that is sullen or unsocial in his humor.” (Henry Clerval) “Winter, spring and summer, passes away during my labors; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves­­-sights which before always yielded me supreme delight, so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation.” (Victor)

18. "Usually, in daily life, people live in a solitude from which they try to escape by means of imagination and discourse. However, this presence which corresponds to life is the opposite of imagination. The encounter that allows the self to rediscover itself is not a ‘cultural’ meeting, but a living encounter; it is not a speech, but a living "fact"— which, of course, may emerge even by hearing someone speak; however, it is always a matter of a relationship with something living, not an ideology or a discourse disconnected from the force of life.” (Luigi Giussani)