Mary Shelly’s. Film… Toys… Politics Author: Mary Shelley, age 19 At the house of the...

Mary Shelly’s

Film…

Toys…

Politics

Author: Mary Shelley, age 19 At the house of the poet Lord

Byron with husband Percy Bysshe Shelley

References Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Written in 1818 One of the first to use

science as a means of creating new life, rather than with a supernatural means

Fits two literary genres! The Gothic novel The Romantic novel

Beginnings attributed to Horace Walpole and The Castle of Otranto (1764).

Elements: setting in a castle mystery and suspense high levels of emotion the supernatural women in distress women threatened by a powerful male a pervading mood of gloom and horror

An importance of feeling and imagination Favored emotion over reason and

logic The use of a suspension of belief

A quest for beauty A use of the abnormal or fanciful Nature as a source of

knowledge and a revelation of God

The idea that man is naturally good and society corrupts him (i.e. “the noble savage”).

Improbable plots A nostalgia for the Gothic and

the supernatural

Introduction to the bookWho was Prometheus?