1. Mary Shelley And Romanticism

2.  Born Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797  Mother: Mary Wollstonecraft  Father: William Godwin  Published her 1 st poem when she was 10 years old  Spent much of her teen years writing in Scotland  Returned to England when she was 16  Met and fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley  Their 3 children died  Percy Shelley died in 1822  At 24, Mary Shelley was a widow.

3. FRANKENSTEIN Published in 1818 when Mary was only 20 years old. She was challenged by Lord Byron to write a ghost story.

4.  Introduction to Frankenstein  Read pp. 760-764 in your literature books.

5. In literature, romantic refers to a literary and philosophical movement that celebrated expressions of emotion, the power of imagination, the beauty of nature, and the importance of individual liberty. Romantic in the literary sense is more closely related to the idea of “hopeless romantic,” an idealist who is optimistic that the world will change for the better, than to the idea of romantic love.

6.  Romantic poets felt that poetry should be an expression of feeling written in simple, unadorned language.  Romantic poets were concerned with the poet’s individual feelings and experiences.

7.  Nature is a typical subject associated with Romantic poetry, but it’s not the mere presence of nature that is significant in Romantic poetry. Instead, it is the relationship between nature and thinking. Nature serves as the medium through which the poet can introduce a problem and work toward its solution.

8.  Romantic poets felt a connection to nature and often personified it as a sublime entity. Nature was a restorative force, a force that could inspire individuals and elicit strong emotions.

9.  While the lyric is often defined as the most important poetic genre of the Romantic Movement, the essay and the novel were also popular during this period. The novel, especially the Gothic, was also a popular genre for Romantic writers.

14.  Blood, pain, death  Cruelty  Characters with “aberrant psychological states”  Events are uncanny, macabre, or melodramatically violent bordering between reality and unreality

15. Purpose  To evoke “terror” versus “horror” in the reader because of situations bordering reality/ unreality.  Often used to teach a message.  May lack a Medieval setting but will develop an atmosphere of gloom and terror.