The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel
George Levine (Editor), U. C. Knoepflmacher (Editor)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520046405
Available worldwide
Paperback, 362 pages
ISBN: 9780520046405
May 1982
$33.95, £27.95
Description:
MARY SHELLEY's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus grew out of a parlor game and a nightmare vision. The story of the book's origin is a famous one, first told in the introduction Mary Shelley wrote for the 1831 edition of the novel. The two Shelleys, Byron, Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori (Byron's physician) spent a "wet, ungenial summer in the Swiss Alps." Byron suggested that "each write a ghost story." If one is to trust Mary Shelley's account (and James Rieger has shown the untrustworthiness of its chronology and particulars), only she and "poor Polidori" took the contest seriously. The two "illustrious poets," according to her, "annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task." Polidori, too, is made to seem careless, unable to handle his story of a "skull-headed lady." Though Mary Shelley is just as deprecating when she speaks of her own "tiresome unlucky ghost story," she also suggests that its sources went deeper. Her truant muse became active as soon as she fastened on the "idea" of "making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream": "'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others."' The twelve essays in this collection attest to the endurance of Mary Shelley's "waking dream." Appropriately, though less romantically, this book also grew out of a playful conversation at a party. When several of the contributors to this book discovered that they were all closet aficionados of Mary Shelley's novel, they decided that a book might be written in which each contributor-contestant might try to account for the persistent hold that Frankenstein continues to exercise on the popular imagination. Within a few months, two films--Warhol's Frankenstein and Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein--and the Hall-Landau and Isherwood-Bachardy television versions of the novel appeared to remind us of our blunted purpose. These manifestations were an auspicious sign and resulted in the book Endurance of Frankenstein.
Contents:
Detailed contents list from WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/title/endurance-of-frankenstein-essays-on-mary-shelleys-novel/oclc/5133230), the press's website only presents the major sections.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley and Frankenstein: A Chronology
[Part I. Traditions : looking forwards and backwards] Ambiguous heritage of Frankenstein / George Levine. Frankenstein as mystery play / Judith Wilt. Fire and ice in Frankenstein / Andrew Griffin --
[Part II. Biographical soundings : of mothers and daughters] Female Gothic / Ellen Moers. Thoughts on the aggression of daughters / U.C. Knoepflmacher --
[Part III. Contexts : society and self] Monsters in the garden : Mary Shelley and the bourgeois family / Kate Ellis. Mary Shelley's monster : politics and psyche in Frankenstein / Lee Sterrenburg. Vital artifice : Mary, Percy, and the psychopolitical integrity of Frankenstein / Peter Dale Scott --
[Part IV. Texture : language and the grotesque] "Godlike science / unhallowed arts" : language, nature and monstrosity / Peter Brooks. Frankenstein and comedy / Philip Stevick --
[Part V. Visual progeny : drama and film] Stage and film children of Frankenstein : a survey / Albert J. Lavalley. Coming to life : Frankenstein and the nature of film narrative / William Nestrick.
Appendix: "Face to face" : of man-apes, monsters, and readers.
Contributors
Selected Annotated Bibliography
Index
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