Talk:Frankenstein

THIS IS NOT A FORUM FOR GENERAL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT "FRANKENSTEIN",
ONLY DISCUSSION PERTINENT TO IMPROVING THE ARTICLE SHOULD BE HELD HERE

Late 18th century?

I think that's the setting but if anyone could bring quotation to give a better idea of when the novel is set, it would improve the article a lot...Undead Herle King (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

two possible answers: during the present (Shelley's present)-- 1810s. Or, during an undefined, inexact pastoral/gothic/elegiac time that brings together elements of the present and the old-timey but which still should not be given a date. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.166.167.126 (talk) 06:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd go with the first. This is science fiction and concerns the hypothetical application of real recent scientific advances. (Richard Holmes's "The Age of Wonder" suggests--fairly convincingly, I'd say-- that Victor Frankenstein's experiments may be based on those of one real-life Johann Wilhelm Ritter, who died in 1810.) TheScotch (talk) 08:41, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Working outline

Initial suggestion:

• Lead
• Biographical background
• Plot summary
• Composition and publication
  • Composition
  • 1818 edition
  • 1831 edition
• Styles and genres
  • Gothic and horror
  • Science fiction
  • Sublime
  • Epistolarity/Frame story/Bibliogenesis
• Themes
  • Reproduction/Motherhood
  • Feminism/Birth myth
  • Enlightenment/Romanticism
  • Homosocial and homoerotic desire
  • Mourning and melancholy
  • Imperialism/Slavery
  • Marxism
• Reception
• Legacy
  • Frankenstein in popular culture

I'd like to start organizing this article better to start moving toward an FA-quality drive. --Laser brain (talk) 18:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The "Styles and genres" and "Themes" layout needs to be improved. The coverage of letters and the frame story is much smaller than then gothic or science fiction. Also, what about the sublime and horror? Also, the themes listed here are some of the more insignificant themes covered by the literature. I would not dedicate entire sections to these at all. What about the Romantic individual? Feminism? Reproduction? The themes section needs to be radically rethought. Let's start by building a list of themes from the Cambridge Companion and introductions to Frankenstein. Awadewit (talk) 11:06, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely, I will be working further on it. This is a living outline just meant to get conversation started. --Laser brain (talk) 15:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, is the Cambridge Companion is available through any online resources? The only thing I physically possess is the Norton Critical edition of the book (which contains some essays not listed in the bibliography) but I can get everything else through the library. --Laser brain (talk) 19:28, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Parts of the CC are available through Google Books, but not everything. Very little for this project is going to be available online, I'm afraid. The Broadview edition has an excellent introduction - I'll list themes from its introduction this weekend. Do you want to split up the books I listed in this bibliography - you read half and I read half? Awadewit (talk) 13:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure thing. I have access to most library resources and will endeavor to obtain anything that's only available in hardcopy. My ILL and doc delivery services are pretty efficient. --Laser brain (talk) 15:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

First stab at style/themes taken from the Broadview edition and the Cambridge Companion

These themes are listed in broad strokes:

• Birth myth, reproduction, and parenting
• Frankenstein as a Godwinian novel
• Frankenstein as a science fiction novel, drawing on the writings of Erasmus Darwin, Luigi Galvani and Humphrey Davy; vitalism debate
• Frankenstein as a Gothic novel
• Frankenstein critiques William Godwin's radicalism
• Frankenstein embraces Mary Wollstonecraft's thoughts on the virtue of domesticity
• Creature represents monstrousness of womanhood
• Sexual desire, gender, and homosociality
• Critique of both Romanticism and Enlightenment thinking

We can use this list as a way to focus our reading. Awadewit (talk) 16:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Reading list

We need to divide up the reading list. Some of these books I have already read, so I just moved those to my list. Laser, why don't you choose first and then I'll read the rest.

Awadewit:

• Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's "Frankenstein". New York: MLA, 1990. ISBN 0873525396.
• Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 080185976X.
• Clery, E. J. Women's Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Plymouth: Northcote House, 2000. ISBN 0746308728.
• Ellis, Kate Ferguson. The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. ISBN 0252060482.
• Forry, Steven Earl. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of "Frankenstein" from Mary Shelley to the Present. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
• Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. ISBN 0300025963.
• Hoeveler, Diane Long. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. ISBN 0271018097.
• Knoepflmacher, U. C. and George Levine, eds. The Endurance of "Frankenstein": Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. ISBN 0520046404.
• Macdonald, D.L. and Kathleen Scherf. "Introduction". Frankenstein. 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999. ISBN 1551113082.
• Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988. ISBN 0416017614.
• Moers, Ellen. Literary Women.
• Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0226675289.
• Rieger, J. "Dr Polidori and the genesis of Frankenstein". Studies in English Literature 3 (Autumn 1963).
• Rubinstein, Marc A. ""My Accursed Origin": The Search for the Mother in Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 15.2 (1976): 165-94.
• Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521007704.
• Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. New York: Grove Press, 2000. ISBN 0802139485.
• Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.
• Skal, David. The Monster Show: A Cultural history of horror. Faber and Faber, 2001. ISBN 0571199968.
• Smith, Johanna M., ed. Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1992.
• Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. ISBN 074740138X.
• St Clair, William. "The Impact of Frankenstein". Eds. Bennett, Betty T. and Stuart Curran. Mary Shelley in Her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN 0801863341.
• Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. ISBN 0801842182.
• Vasbinder, S. H. Scientific Attitudes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Newtonian Monism as a Basis for the Novel. Kent State University Press, 1976.
• Williams, Anne. The Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0226899071.

Laser brain:

• Aldiss, Brian W. "On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley". Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Eds. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005.
• Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Bann, Stephen, ed. "Frankenstein": Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion, 1994.
• Bohls, Elizabeth A. "Standards of Taste, Discourses of 'Race', and the Aesthetic Education of a Monster: Critique of Empire in Frankenstein". Eighteenth-Century Life 18.3 (1994): 23–36.
• Botting, Fred. Making Monstrous: "Frankenstein", Criticism, Theory. New York: St. Martin's, 1991.
• Butler, Marilyn. "Introduction". Frankenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192833669.
• Donawerth, Jane. Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
• Dunn, Richard J. "Narrative Distance in Frankenstein". Studies in the Novel 6.4 (1974): 408–17.
• Freedman, Carl. "Hail Mary: On the Author of Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies 29.2 (2002): 253–64.
• Gigante, Denise. "Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein". ELH 67.2 (2000): 565–87.
• Heffernan, James A. W. "Looking at the Monster: Frankenstein and Film". Critical Inquiry 24.1 (1997): 133–58.
• Hindle, Maurice. "Vital Matters: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Romantic Science". Critical Survey 2.1 (1990) 29-35.
• Hodges, Devon. "Frankenstein and the Feminine Subversion of the Novel". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2.2 (1983): 155–64.
• Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. ISBN 0007204582.
• Kiely, Robert. The Romantic Novel in England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. ISBN 0674779355.
• Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. ISBN 0226475514.
• Lew, Joseph W. "The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley's Critique of Orientalism in Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 30.2 (1991): 255–83.
• London, Bette. "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Spectacle of Masculinity". PMLA 108.2 (1993): 256–67.
• Marshall, Tim. Murdering to dissect: grave-robbing, Frankenstein and the anatomy literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN 0719045436.
• Miles, Robert. Gothic Writing 1750–1820: A Genealogy. London: Routledge, 1993.
• O'Flinn, Paul. "Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein". Literature and History 9.2 (1983): 194–213.
• Moers, Ellen. "Female Gothic: Monsters, Goblins, Freaks". New York Review of Books 21 (4 April ?).
• Rauch, Alan. "The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". Studies in Romanticism 34.2 (1995): 227–53.
• Stableford, Brian. "Frankenstein and the Origins of Science Fiction". Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and Its Precursors. Ed. David Seed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995.
• Tropp, Martin. Mary Shelley's Monster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Notes

Talk:Frankenstein/Notes

The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein

Thank you, User:StN for replacing the Lauritsen paragraph. Unfortunately, User:Awadewit took it out again. S/he read the book's reviews (though apparently not the book itself) and learned that Lauritsen's hypothesis is a distinctly minority one. However, it already said that in the disputed paragraph. User:Awadewit's comment suggests that s/he thought the paragraph equates the weight of Lauritsen's hypothesis to that of 200 years of scholarship. This is not the case, as a reading of the paragraph will confirm. There is a role in an encyclopedia for minority views, if they are labeled as such, and have provoked discussion.Syzygos (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

We don't include every minority view in the article. It has to gain some traction. This one has next to none. There are many minority views on Frankenstein - there are hundreds of books and articles on this novel. We don't include each one. Including this would be WP:UNDUE and WP:RECENTISM of the worst kind. Awadewit (talk) 05:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we (i.e., you) need to remove the reference to this book from the Percy Bysshe Shelley article, then. Syzygos (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I don't have that article watchlisted, so I didn't know it was there. I've removed it. Awadewit (talk) 02:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Frankenstein in popular culture

As "Frankenstein in popular culture" is an enormous topic, I was wondering whether or not we should recruit someone to work on this section. I'm not particularly keen to work on it myself, being much more interested in the literary end of things. Thoughts? Awadewit (talk) 14:50, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

"In popular culture" in Wikipedia is generally a euphemism for trivia, and trivia in Wikipedia is officially discouraged (rightly so). I think the "...in popular culture" section here should be replaced with one concerning adaptations for stage and film, changing the title accordingly and erasing redundant references to these adaptations now scattered throughout the article. TheScotch (talk) 08:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

New archive

I've created a new archive, Talk:Frankenstein/Archive2. It should be listed in the box above, but is not. Anyone know the problem? Awadewit (talk) 19:42, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

You need a space between "Archive" and "2". Doctorfluffy (robe and wizard hat) 20:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you - I have fixed it now. Awadewit (talk) 02:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Another source

Thanks for the invitation to join in, Awadewit. I'm not sure if I'll be able to contribute in a sustained way, but here is a book you may have overlooked:

Todd, Janet. Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle. Profile Books, 2007.

There are a dozen pages listed in the index for Frankenstein, including a close timeline of one part of the writing. e.g. p252. "Chapter 5 of Frankenstein, written in Bath immediately after Fanny killed herself, begins the new story of Justine." Todd is, of course, the author of a major biography of Wollstonecraft. BrainyBabe (talk) 15:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, BB. I used that as a substantial source for Fanny Imlay. Awadewit (talk) 01:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Draft - live or sandbox?

Do we want to create a draft article or just work on the "live" version? I'm going to be rereading Frankenstein in a couple of week, as I will be teaching it, so I thought that would be a good time to work on the plot summary. Awadewit (talk) 03:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've never used a draft before, but I've also never worked on an article that had many hands in it. What are the advantages of using a draft? --Laser brain (talk) 14:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I was on vacation for a while - didn't get to this until now. Drafts are advantageous because you can work "in private" for a while and be messy - sentence fragments, no formatting - that sort of thing. Awadewit (talk) 15:48, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Frankenstein/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

Notified: Stbalbach (talk · contribs), Ed Fitzgerald (talk · contribs), Awadewit (talk · contribs), Wrad (talk · contribs), Mervyn (talk · contribs), Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/GeneralForum, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/19th century task force, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science Fiction, Wikipedia:WikiProject Horror/Notice Board

Delisted per discussion with main author below.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:40, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

As part of the GA Sweeps, I have tagged this article for reassessment. The WP:LEAD of this article needs to be restructured to follow the guidelines. The images are all PD. This article is quite deficient in citations. There are several entire paragraphs without a single citation. In fact, some entire sections have no references. The citation needed tag(s) need to be resolved. The concerned editors should review WP:WIAGA and attempt to bring this article up to the current standards.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, I think Awadewit and Laser brain (see the article's talk) were planning on working on this article this summer (July was mentioned on Awadewit's talk), and at least Awadewit has a vacation notice up on her talk right now. IOW, this may be about the worst possible timing for a GAR. --Xover (talk) 08:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Many GARs take 4 or 5 weeks to resolve. If in that time there is no sign of improvement efforts we can evaluate the article for delisting. I will keep this open for at least 4 or 5 weeks. Five weeks will take us past the middle of July.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:59, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

This article was passed many years ago for GA and obviously does not meet the criteria for GA - it is an atrocious article: there are many sections missing, much of the article is poorly written, and much of the article is not sourced. Laser brain and I are currently working on improving it (you can see our plan on the talk page as well as our notes). If you want to delist it, go ahead. The article will take several months to complete. Awadewit (talk) 14:41, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

So you would concur with delisting and renomination when appropriate?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 14:57, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Currently, it is not a GA and if the GA community doesn't want to wait months for us to bring it up to GA status, they should delist it now. Awadewit (talk) 15:22, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Why is Alchemy not mentioned?

The turning point for young Victor in the novel is an Alchemical book by Cornelius Agrippa that he stumbles upon, later on he mentions both Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus as other alchemists he likes to read. Paracelsus even claimed in the Renaissance that he created life, or a Humunculus (strangely enough from just semen and dung, as back then it was believed semen had "little men" inside). This is however not featured in the article, giving galvanism a degree if importance (perhaps to link it to the movies), but not a mention of his obssesion with alchemical books, which in the book are dismissed by his proffesors. Alchemy back in the day not also hoped to achieve transmutation of gold, but all sorts of wild and unrealistic goals, among them Immortality, a cure for all illnesses and the creation of life (which dates even 500 years before Paracelsus).--142.177.31.222 (talk) 00:40, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The article should be about the book; it shouldn't recite the entire story. If you want to know what Frankenstein says about alchemy, just read the thing. The "Plot" section is too long already. TheScotch (talk) 08:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

"Reception"

Re: "What is interesting to note about these glowing reviews is that the critics assume that the anonymous author is a man.":

Interesting to whom? This remark is Point-Of-View and should be removed or rewritten.

Re: "Despite these initial dismissals, critical reception has been largely positive since the mid-20th century.":

It seems to me doubtful one can reasonably call middle twentieth-century assessment of an early nineteenth-century work "reception". The novel had already been received long before. "Critical reception" here should be replaced with some term like critical opinion. Also: "Positive" should be replaced with something like favorable.

TheScotch (talk) 08:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Continues to disappoint me with its shitty articles Evolutionist6 (talk) 15:53, 26 October 2009 (UTC)