Introduction to Frankensteinor

How we got to the Romantic Era

In order to fully understand this era and how to approach the novel, you need to understand that Shelley’s world has recently transitioned from a VERY different era known as…

Neoclassicism

aka

The Age of ReasonThe Enlightenment

Definition

Neoclassicism is a literary movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that stressed the importance of using ancient Greek and Roman (the Classical period) literature as a guide for creation and criticism.

Hence, there is the paradox of the term: “neo,” meaning “new” and classicism, meaning “oldness.”

Come get the handout!

Neoclassical Dates

1660-1798

Skip to the Who’s Who part and add these names: Jonathan Swift (who wrote Gulliver’s Travels, Daniel Defoe (who wrote Robinson Crusoe), Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson (and all our Founding Fathers), Alexander Pope, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry

Romantic Era Characteristics

1798 – 1832Who’s Who: William Wordsworth,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving

(the guy who wrote Rip Van Winkle and the stories about The Headless Horseman & Ichabod Crane)

Neoclassical vs. Romantic

Now, go to the chart on the bottom of the handout, and see if you can make some educated guesses about which are Neoclassical characteristics and which are Romantic.

Use the dates and who’s who, as well as what you’ve read so far of Frankenstein, and “Kubla Khan”

We will go over the answers to these after we’ve done some of the notes.

The Pendulum of Western Literature

Literature in the Western world can be thought of as swinging back and forth between two artistic ideals: classicism, which stresses following tradition and the rules derived thereof, and anti-classicism (or romanticism), which stresses originality and breaking tradition.

Aesthetics of Identity vs. Aesthetics of Opposition

This pendulum swing can also be thought in terms of the aesthetics of identity versus the aesthetics of opposition.Aesthetics is the study of beauty; in this case, beauty in literatureThe aesthetics of identity says that we find beauty in the familiar; we like art that is like what we have seen before. Thus, classicism is an aesthetics of identity.The aesthetics of opposition says that we find beauty in that which is new and different. That is the creed of the romantic artist.

Types of Novels Gothic novel: exploits the possibilities of mystery

and terror in gloomy landscapes, decaying mansions with dark dungeons, secret passages, instruments of torture, ghostly visitations, ghostly music behind which lurks no one knows what as the central story, the persecution of a beautiful maiden by an obsessed and haggard villain. The real originator of English Gothic novel was Horace Walpole, with his famous Castle of Otranto (1764).

Mary Shelley had obviously read this; she came from a highly educated household and had 2 scholars as parents.

These novels, which rebel against the increasing commercialism and rationalism of the era, opened up to later fiction the dark, irrational side of human nature.

More Types of NovelsEpistolary novel: a type of novel in which the narrative is carried on through a series of letters. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa Harlowe (1748) are among the best known epistolary novels.

In the Romantic era, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel, which begins with Jonathan Harker detailing the trip he’s about to take to Transylvania.

The Transition of an Era: the PreRomanticsThe pendulum begins its major swing to the other side…some of this began around 1750, when Britain was launched on a course of rapid industrialization w/the development of mills and factories belching filth into the sky…families start moving to the cities and toil at machines for 12-14 hours a day…

Writers and intellectuals began to lose faith in the ability of human reason to solve every problem. The thinkers in this Age had looked to science to make life better for humanity (see G. Travels, book 3), yet at what cost comes this “progress”?

William Blake, Thomas Gray, and Robert Burns are the poets who exemplify the transition from the formal, classical poetic styles of the early 18th century to the more emotional manner of the romantic era.

Can you think of any other major western world events that are indicative of changing philosophies?

Neoclassical Traits (go back to handout)

1. Emphasis upon objective reason and forethought; logic; planning; strategy

2. Love of classical lit (the Greeks) and literary forms

3. Controlled, restrained writing dealing w/expected, typical, and familiar topics

4. Objects arranged in a balanced and symmetrical pattern

5. Love of city and industry; the elite and educated

Romantic Traits Emphasis on subjective emotion and

spontaneity

Love of one’s own national literature and literary forms

Wild, exuberant writing dealing w/unexpected, exotic, and foreign topics

Objects contrasted with each other and/or arranged asymmetrically

Love of the country and nature; the peasant; the pastoral and rural life in an idealized country setting

Now, let’s check those charts…

Time to test your knowledge…

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Neoclassical or Romantic?

Now listen…

Romanticism (1798-1832)

A Movement Across the Arts

Definition Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature,

and music during the 19th century.

Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s

Imagination

Intuition

Idealism

Inspiration

Individuality

Imagination Imagination was emphasized over “reason.”

This was a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.”

Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.

British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

Intuition Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason.

Emotions were important in Romantic art.

British Romantic William Wordsworth, in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

Idealism Idealism is the concept that we can make the world a

better place.

Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter – thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it is. It is seeing the world as we would like it, rather than as it actually is.

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.

Inspiration The Romantic artist,

musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”

What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

Individuality Romantics celebrated the individual.

During this time period, Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.

Origins Romanticism began to

take root as a movement following the French Revolution.

The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

“Emotions recollected in tranquility” is another big quote from that book’s preface.

The Arts Romanticism was a movement across all the

arts: visual art, music, and literature.

All of the arts embraced themes prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love. Literature and art from this time depicted these themes. Music (ballets and operas) illustrated these themes.

Shakespeare came back into vogue.

Visual Arts: Examples

Neoclassical Art

Romantic Art

Music “Classical” musicians

included composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn.

Romantic musicians included composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Lizst, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, and Ludwig von Beethoven

Music: Components

1730-1820.

Classical music emphasized internal order and balance.

1800-1910.

Romantic music emphasized expression of feelings.

QW: the Gothic Novel/Movie

Let’s pretend you are making a movie/writing a scary short story. List specific ways you’d make it suspenseful, creepy, and with an eerie mood.

Get handout for Gothic Novels.

Mood Piece Ever play the game Taboo? Explain how

that works!

In a few minutes, you are going be in small groups (not of your choosing) and will be picking a mysterious magical mood card. It will have a word on it that you and your partners will create a short story (one paragraph) around. It must evoke that mood/atmosphere, but like the game Taboo, you can’t say that word or any form of it in your paragraph.

After you’ve written your very neat final copy together, you will read it to the class, and they will try to guess your mood word. If you’ve done a good job, and every bit of your story evokes that mood, they should be able to guess. The final copy is a homework grade!

Frankenstein: The backstory Mary Shelley (1797 to 1851) was the daughter of Mary Wollenstonecraft

(great feminist writer) and William Godwin (political philosopher) who were a bit radical in that they were opposed to the principles of marriage, and kept separate residences, but married for the sake of her upcoming birth

Unfortunately, the mom died 11 days after Mary’s birth, so Godwin later takes another wife, who has kids already, and so there’s this combined household (including her mom’s child w/another man) and, well, it’s complicated.

Brief Bio for Mary Shelley She was free-thinking,

revolutionary, highly educated, and from a very literate household.

Family has guests like Coleridge (from whom she drew inspiration—“Rime”), Charles Lamb, and soon Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was “singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible.” These qualities plus her beauty endeared her to Shelley.

Mary was almost 17 when Shelley and his young wife Harriet were frequent visitors to her family home. He and Mary fell passionately in love and eloped, which according to the principles of free love they all except Harriet believed in, was sanctified by a higher law…Shelley thought this was okay since he no longer loved his wife whom he found far less interesting that this beautiful child of two famous radicals.

“Love should have absolute authority in matters of conduct.” Yet still dad wasn’t too happy with this, which is why they eloped.

Shelley seems to have forgotten that Harriet herself was 16 when he married her three years ago. They had a daughter and Harriet was currently pregnant.

She drowns herself a few years later.

Mary Shelley By the age of 25, she has been

pregnant 4 times: two died in infancy, one miscarried, one had survived to adulthood. These events plus her half-sister’s suicide and Harriet’s death may account for the preoccupation with the solemn terrors of giving birth which form a central motif of Frankenstein.

Shelley himself dies at sea with two companions in 1822 (in a storm; and his body washed up on shore 11 days later)

It was burned on the beach, but the heart didn’t burn; there were stories of its being calcified. Shelley’s friend, Trelawny, snatched it from the flames and later gave it to Mary.

How the story was bornFrankenstein was written when she, her husband, some other friend, and Lord

Byron are hanging out at the Shelley home on Lake Geneva in 1816. They were looking for a diversion and so came up with the idea of each trying

his/her hand at writing a ghost story. Her idea was encouraged by her husband to turn it into a full-length work.

The Romantic Hero• Is a character of extremes – often at odds with society b/c not interested in

authority or conformity. Scorns and defies it.– Can be obsessive, brooding, dark, self-centered– But is also bold, intuitive, idealistic; becomes

consumed with the desire for the “unattainable” & longs for something MORE.

– Values emotion over rational thought– Often lives excluded from society and is uneasy

w/those who represent the trappings of civilization

The Romantic Hero• Is represented in the mythological character

Prometheus. Think about why this novel is subtitled, “The Modern Prometheus.”

• Heaven-storming hero who is defiant against Zeus’ rules regarding man, so represents the ideas that:– The Individual defies established order – Each person must create a system by which to live;

individualism over absolutes.

Can you think of any Romantic Heroes in literature, movies, or tv?