4. What Does Victor Frankenstein Create?

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module we think about the nature of the Victor Frankenstein’s creation. How should we describe him? A monster? A creature? or something else? In particular, we think about how the creature relates to the social politics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, his literary antecedents (especially Adam and Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost), and consider the extent to which the creature deserves our sympathy.

Course

In this course, Professor Nick Groom (University of Exeter) explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We begin by thinking about the life of Mary Shelley herself, focusing in particular on her fateful trip to the Villa Diodati with Percy Shelley in the summer of 1816, as well as the key differences between the 1818 first edition of the novel and the 1831 second edition. In the second module we think about the genre of the novel – to what extent is this a traditional gothic horror? – before moving on in the third module to consider the novel’s structure as a patchwork of different tales, accounts, and autobiographies, all contained within a series of letters. In the fourth module, we focus on the creature himself – or should we call him a monster? or something else? Finally, in the fifth module, we turn to the figure of Victor Frankenstein. To what extent do with sympathise with Frankenstein? Does he deserve what the creature does to him?

Lecturer

Nick Groom is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter, a critically acclaimed author on subjects ranging from the history of the Union Jack to Thomas Chatterton, has edited several books and regularly appears on television, radio and at literary festivals as an authority on English Literature, the ‘Gothic’ and ‘British’ identity.