"A seminal work of Victorian literature, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is considered one of the most influential and popular novels in the English language. Equal parts Gothic romance, science-fiction adventure, and horror story, Frankenstein has spawned numerous stage and screen adaptations, emerging as an icon of modern popular culture" (Lanza, 2020).
References
Lanza, J. (2020, October 7). Frankenstein. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/film-and-television/frankenstein
Keywords & Subjects
The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction by
This new study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the beginnings of Irish gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland. Jarlath Killeen argues that Irish gothic should be read in the context of the split in Irish Anglican public opinion that opened in the 1750s, and seen as a space for the development and expression of liberal Anglican opinion in a changing political landscape. By providing a fully historicised account of the beginnings of the genre in Ireland, the book also addresses the theoretical controversies that have frustrated discussion of the Irish gothic in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The book gives ample space to the critical debate, and rigorously defends a reading of the Irish gothic as an Anglican, Patriot tradition. This reading demonstrates the connections between little-known Irish gothic fictions of the mid-eighteenth century (The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Longsword), the Irish gothic tradition more generally, and also the gothic as a genre of global significance. Key Features. Examines gothic texts including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, (Anon), The Adventures of Miss Sophia Berkley and Thomas Leland's Longsword Provides a rigorous and robust theory of the Irish Gothic Reads early Irish gothic fully into the political context of mid-eighteenth century Ireland
A Life with Mary Shelley by
In 1980, deconstructive and psychoanalytic literary theorist Barbara Johnson wrote an essay on Mary Shelley for a colloquium on the writings of Jacques Derrida. The essay marked the beginning of Johnson's lifelong interest in Shelley as well as her first foray into the field of ""women's studies, "" one of whose commitments was the rediscovery and analysis of works by women writers previously excluded from the academic canon. Indeed, the last book Johnson completed before her death was Mary Shelley and Her Circle, published here for the first time. Shelley was thus the subject for Johnson's beg.
Monsters and the Monstrous by
Emerging from depths comes a series of papers dealing with one of the most significant creations that reflects on and critiques human existence. Both a warning and a demonstration, the monster as myth and metaphor provides an articulation of human imagination that toys with the permissible and impermissible. Monsters from zombies to cuddly cartoon characters, emerging from sewers, from pages of literature, propaganda posters, movies and heavy metal, all are covered in this challenging, scholarly collection. This volume the third in the series presents a marvellous collection of studies on the metaphor of the monster in literature, cinema, music, culture, philosophy, history and politics. Both historical reflection and concerns of our time are addressed with clarity and written in an accessible manner providing appeal for the scholar and lay reader alike. This eclectic collection will be of interest to academics and students working in a range of disciplines, such as cultural studies, film studies, political theory, philosophy and literature studies.
Monstrous Progeny by
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is its own type of monster mythos that will not die, a corpus whose parts keep getting harvested to animate new artistic creations. What makes this tale so adaptable and so resilient that, nearly 200 years later, it remains vitally relevant in a culture radically different from the one that spawned its birth? Monstrous Progeny takes readers on a fascinating exploration of the Frankenstein family tree, tracing the literary and intellectual roots of Shelley's novel from the sixteenth century and analyzing the evolution of the book's figures and themes into modern productions that range from children's cartoons to pornography. Along the way, media scholar Lester D. Friedman and historian Allison B. Kavey examine the adaptation and evolution of Victor Frankenstein and his monster across different genres and in different eras. In doing so, they demonstrate how Shelley's tale and its characters continue to provide crucial reference points for current debates about bioethics, artificial intelligence, cyborg lifeforms, and the limits of scientific progress. Blending an extensive historical overview with a detailed analysis of key texts, the authors reveal how the Frankenstein legacy arose from a series of fluid intellectual contexts and continues to pulsate through an extraordinary body of media products. Both thought-provoking and entertaining, Monstrous Progeny offers a lively look at an undying and significant cultural phenomenon.
Transmedia Creatures by
The cultural value of a text, not least as a form of transferable and adaptable cultural capital capable of surviving on its own, has become a central concern for a wide range of teachers and researchers working in the field of adaptation studies, a methodological and cultural domain whose diverse interdisciplinary and transmedial imprint is so notably present in contemporary culture. In line with the concept of convergence theorized by Henry Jenkins, which posits an expansive and collaborative pattern of textuality, it is generally accepted that a text is dispersed/regenerates diachronically and synchronically on multiple platforms and across different users. In keeping with such theoretical and methodological premises, it seems appropriate, on the anniversary of the first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), to present a collection of essays on Frankenstein by international scholars from converging disciplines such as humanities, musicology, film studies, television studies, media studies, English and digital humanities. Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives highlights how "cultural content" is redistributed through multiple media, forms and modes of production (including user-generated ones from "below") that often appear synchronously and are able to dismantle and renew established readings of the text, while at the same time incorporating and revitalizing aspects that have always been central to it. Ultimately, Frankenstein, as evidenced by this collection, is paradoxically enriched by the heteroglossia of preconceptions/misreadings/overreadings that attend it, and that reveal the complex interweaving of perceptions and responses it generates.
Film & Videos
Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night
Producer: BBC Worldwide Learning; 2015
Description: On 16 June 1816, trapped inside a villa by insatiable thunderstorms erupting across Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Lord Byron challenged his party of young bohemians to a ghost story competition. That night, Byron’s challenge gave birth to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Polidori’s The Vampyre, the first great vampire novel. Combining drama and a stellar cast of popular writers, including Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood, this documentary explores of one of the most significant moments in gothic history and its lasting effect on modern literature.
Producer: DCD Rights Limited; 2015
Description: Seeking to better understand Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, author and anatomist Professor Alice Roberts returns to the original manuscript and traces the story of Mary's life. She finds someone concerned with the very act of creation itself, discovers clues of another writer's influence, sees a critique of the Romantic ideal of the solitary creative genius, and examines the influence of Mary's parents. Professor Roberts shows that the ideas informing Frankenstein make the novel much more than a simple horror story. Mary Shelley's account does deal in death, but ultimately it provokes us to ask questions about how we live.
Witchcraft is the "exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, as the work of crones who meet secretly at night, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the Devil, or Satan, and perform black magic. Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality" (Russell, n.d.).
References
Russell, J. (n.d.). Witchcraft. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/witchcraft
Keywords & Subjects
The Bewitching of Anne Gunter by
In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter was bewitched: she foamed at the mouth, contorted wildly in her bedchamber, went into trances. Her garters and bodices were perpetually unlacing themselves. Her signature symptom was to vomit pins and "she voided some pins downwards as well by her water or otherwise." Popular history at its best, "The Bewitching of Anne Gunter" opens a fascinating window onto the past. It's a tale of controlling fathers, willful daughters, nosy neighbors, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe. Above all it's an original and reveal.
Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft by
Covers the history of witchcraft from 1750 B.C.E. though the modern day. Includes a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography featuring cross-referenced entries on witch hunts, witchcraft trials, and related practices around the world.
A Storm of Witchcraft by
Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work. The resulting Salem Witch Trials, culminating in the execution of 19 villagers, persists as one of the most mysterious and fascinating events in American history. Historians have speculated on a web of possible causes for the witchcraft that started in Salem and spread across the region--religious crisis, ergot poisoning, an encephalitis outbreak, frontier war hysteria--but most agree that there was no single factor. Rather, as Emerson Baker illustrates in this seminal new work, Salem was 'a perfect storm': a unique convergence of conditions and events that produced something extraordinary throughout New England in 1692 and the following years, and which has haunted us ever since. Baker shows how a range of factors in the Bay colony in the 1690s, including a new charter and government, a lethal frontier war, and religious and political conflicts, set the stage for the dramatic events in Salem. Engaging a range of perspectives, he looks at the key players in the outbreak--the accused witches and the people they allegedly bewitched, as well as the judges and government officials who prosecuted them--and wrestles with questions about why the Salem tragedy unfolded as it did, and why it has become an enduring legacy.
Wicca by
The past century has borne witness to a growing interest in the belief systems of ancient Europe. By far the largest and best known of these Paganisms has been Wicca, a new religious movement that can now count hundreds of thousands of adherents worldwide. Wicca was first presented as the survival of an ancient pre-Christian Witch-Cult, whose participants assembled in covens to venerate their Horned God and Mother Goddess, to celebrate seasonal festivities, and to cast spells by the light of the full moon. Spreading to North America, where it diversified under the impact of environmentalism, feminism, and the 1960s counter-culture, Wicca came to be presented as a Goddess-centered nature religion. Today, Wicca is a maturing religious movement replete with its own distinct worldview, unique culture, and internal divisions. This book represents the first published academic introduction to be exclusively devoted to this fascinating faith, exploring how this Witches'Craft developed, what its participants believe and practice, and what the Wiccan community actually looks like.
Witchcraft in America by
Witchcraft in Early North America investigates European, African, and Indian witchcraft beliefs and their expression in colonial America. Alison Games's engaging book takes us beyond the infamous outbreak at Salem, Massachusetts, to look at how witchcraft was a central feature of colonial societies in North America. Her substantial and lively introduction orients readers to the subject and to the rich selection of documents that follows. The documents begin with first encounters between European missionaries and Native Americans in New France and New Mexico, and they conclude with witch hunts.
Witches: Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters
Producer: Digital Rights Group Limited; 2011
Description: Tony Robinson recreates the evil spells and dark rituals of medieval witchcraft. He learns how to identify, arrest and torture a witch in his quest to discover why, in the 16th and 17th centuries, our ancestors were so terrified of black magic that they executed more than 40,000 supposed witches.
Producer: Albatross World Sales; 2017
Description: In New England in 1692, religious hysteria overcomes the people of the small town of Salem and brings about a ruthless manhunt. At a time when Europe has largely overcome the witch craze, dozens of people are accused of sorcery and executed. To this day, the case of Salem fascinates scholars and artists alike, since the cause of this collective mania remains a mystery. Competing theories name a combination of religious hysteria, aggressively suppressed sexuality, the fear of the “devilish Indians,” common avarice, and the dual worldview of the Puritans. The episode is a watershed for the young colony and one of the darkest chapters in the history of the United States.
Dracula is a "gothic novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897, that was the most popular literary work derived from vampire legends and became the basis for an entire genre of literature and film" (Lohnes, 2018).
A vampire is a "corpse that supposedly returns to life at night to suck people's blood. Stories of similar creatures come from many parts of the world. But most vampire tales originated in Eastern European and Balkan countries, such as Hungary, Romania, Greece, and Albania" (Vampire, 2018).
References
Lohnes, K. (2018). Dracula. Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dracula-novel
Vampire. (2018). Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia.
Keywords & Subjects
Bram Stoker's Dracula by
Dracula (1897) is one of the most commonly studied gothic novels and has been hugely influential through adaptations in fiction, on stage and in cinema.€ Offering an authoritative, up-to-date guide for students, this book introduces its context, language, themes, criticism and afterlife, leading students to a more sophisticated understanding of the text.€. This is the ideal guide to reading and studying the novel, setting Dracula in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting.
Dracula and Philosophy by
John C. Altmann decides whether Dracula can really be blamed for his crimes, since it's his nature as a vampire to behave a certain way. Robert Arp argues that Dracula's addiction to live human blood dooms him to perpetual frustration and misery. John V. Karavitis sees Dracula as a Randian individual pitted against the Marxist collective. Greg Littmann maintains that if we disapprove of Dracula's behavior, we ought to be vegetarians. James Edwin Mahon uses the example of Dracula to resolve nagging problems about the desirability of immortality. Adam Barkman and Michael Versteeg ponder what it would really feel like to be Dracula, and thereby shed some light on the nature of consciousness. Robert Vuckovich looks at the sexual morality of Dracula and other characters in the Dracula saga. Ariane de Waal explains that "Dragula" is scary because every time this being appears, it causes "gender trouble." And Cari Callis demonstrates that the Count is really the Jungian Shadow archetype--with added Shapeshifter elements--in the journey of Mina Harker, heroine/victim of Stoker's novel, from silly girl to empowered woman.
Dracula and the Gothic in Literature, Pop Culture and the Arts by
This volume brings together fourteen articles that reappraise the productivity of Stoker's Dracula and the strong influence it still exerts on today's generations. The volume explores various multimodal and multimedia adaptations of the book, by critically examining its literary, cinematic, theatrical, televised and artistic versions. In so doing, it reassesses the origins, evolution, imagery, mythology, theory and criticism of Gothic fiction and of the Gothic (sub)culture. The volume is innovative in that it congregates various angles to the Gothic phenomenon, providing an overview of the interdisciplinary relationships between different cultural, artistic and creative reworkings of the Gothic in general and of Stoker's legacy in particular.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Twilight by
With contributions from various experts, this is an interdisciplinary approach to the global phenomenon that is the Twilight series, which has evolved well beyond the novels by Stephenie Meyer. This anthology contains in-depth film analyses, gender perspectives, economic and literary studies of the book market, and several articles on fans and fandom as well as contributions investigating vampire fiction traditions and vampire religious beliefs. A theoretically well-founded study, this volume maps the contemporary cultural experience surrounding Twilight and discusses multiple themes, such as.
Universal Vampire by
Since the publication of John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse draugr, an "undead" creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula. In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions. The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire's beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.
Film & Videos
Producer: A&E; 1993
Description: Dark mysterious creatures, tales of vampires are told in many different cultures around the world. This revealing documentary explores the fear and intrigue that these undead beings stir. Origins of the Vampire also presents the surprising truth about real-life cases through history. From Vlad the Impaler’s 16th-century Transylvania to Bram Stoker’s stories of the 19th century to today’s movies and books, the lore of the vampire always thrills.
From Dawn til Dracula: The True History of the Vampire
Producer: MVD Entertainment Group; 2019
Description: The story of the emergence of vampirism, from its religious beginnings to its personification under various names—none of them as renowned as that of Dracula. In the course of investigating this power from beyond the grave, we look at an event that captures the headlines in the 1990's, where vampire hunters invaded London's most famous graveyard in an endeavor to lay the undead to rest.
Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night
Producer: BBC Worldwide Learning; 2015
Description: On 16 June 1816, trapped inside a villa by insatiable thunderstorms erupting across Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Lord Byron challenged his party of young bohemians to a ghost story competition. That night, Byron’s challenge gave birth to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Polidori’s The Vampyre, the first great vampire novel. Combining drama and a stellar cast of popular writers, including Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood, this documentary explores of one of the most significant moments in gothic history and its lasting effect on modern literature.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
"Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for evocative short stories and poems that captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story" (Edgar Allan Poe, 2014).
References
Edgar Allan Poe. (2014). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.biography.com/writer/edgar-allan-poe
Notable Works
American Terror by
If America is a nation founded upon Enlightenment ideals, then why are so many of its most celebrated pieces of literature so dark? 'American Terror' returns to the question of American literature's distinctive tone of terror through a close study of three authors - Jonathan Edwards, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville - who not only wrote works of terror, but who defended, theorised, and championed it
Edgar Allan Poe by
Most frequently regarded as a writer of the supernatural, Poe was actually among the most versatile of American authors, writing social satire, comic hoaxes, mystery stories, science fiction, prose poems, literary criticism and theory, and even a play. As a journalist and editor, Poe was closely in touch with the social, political, and cultural trends of nineteenth-century America. In Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond Gothicism, twelve authors examine this ''other'' Poe.
Poe's Critical Theory by
A collection of Poe's statements on the theory of writing and the theory of criticism.
Poe and the Subversion of American Literature by
Argues that Poe offers an alternative to American literature through his satirical critique of U.S. national culture and his projection of a postnational imagination.
Poe in His Own Time by
Benjamin Fisher includes a comprehensive introduction and a detailed chronology of Poe's short life; each entry is introduced by a short headnote that places the selection in historical and cultural context, and explanatory notes provide information about people and places. --from publisher description.
The Poet Edgar Allan Poe by
The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe has had a rough ride in America, as Emerson's sneering quip about "The Jingle Man" testifies. That these poems have never lacked a popular audience has been a persistent annoyance in academic and literary circles; that they attracted the admiration of innovative poetic masters in Europe and especially France--notably Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Valéry--has been further cause for embarrassment. Jerome McGann offers a bold reassessment of Poe's achievement, arguing that he belongs with Whitman and Dickinson as a foundational American poet and cultural presence. Not all American commentators have agreed with Emerson's dim view of Poe's verse. For McGann, a notable exception is William Carlos Williams, who said that the American poetic imagination made its first appearance in Poe's work. The Poet Edgar Allan Poe explains what Williams and European admirers saw in Poe, how they understood his poetics, and why his poetry had such a decisive influence on Modern and Post-Modern art and writing. McGann contends that Poe was the first poet to demonstrate how the creative imagination could escape its inheritance of Romantic attitudes and conventions, and why an escape was desirable. The ethical and political significance of Poe's work follows from what the poet takes as his great subject: the reader. The Poet Edgar Allan Poe takes its own readers on a spirited tour through a wide range of Poe's verse as well as the critical and theoretical writings in which he laid out his arresting ideas about poetry and poetics.
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