I. Mary Shelley
1. 1797
A. Born August 30 in London.
B. Mother, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).
C. Father, William Godwin: Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).

2. 1814
A. Mary meets Percy Shelley.
B. Percy is married but later abandons his wife, Harriet.
C. July 28: Percy and Mary leave England for continental Europe.

3. 1815
A. February 22: Mary’s first child born prematurely and dies a few days later.

4. 1816
A. January: Mary’s second child, William, born.
B. June 1: Mary, Percy, and William in Geneva.
C. June 16: Lord Byron announces a contest in which he, Percy, Mary, and his physician, John Polidori, will each compose a ghost story.
D. June 22: Mary, Byron, Percy, and Polidori discuss the experiments of Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini.
E. June 23: Mary begins to write Frankenstein. She is not yet 19.
F. December: Mary and Percy marry after Harriet’s suicide. Primarily this is an attempt by Percy to gain custody of his children by Harriet.

5. 1817
A. May: Mary completes Frankenstein.

6. 1818
A. Frankenstein published anonymously. Reviewers criticize the novel for a lack of morality.

7. 1819
A. Death of William Shelley at age three of malaria.

8. 1822
A. July 8: Percy Shelley lost at sea during a storm.

9. 1823
A. Frankenstein reissued. Mary Shelley given credit as the author. Reviewers praise the novel in light of the author’s age and gender.

10. 1831
A. Revised edition of Frankenstein published. Mary adds an introduction.

11. 1851
A. Dies February 1.


II. Cultural trends in Frankenstein
1. The Enlightenment
A. Stressed the use of reason and systematic thinking at individual, communal, and national levels.
B. Stressed community and the moral value of action taken on behalf of others.
C. Rise of scientific inquiry.
D. Ideals of freedom and democracy inspired both the French and American Revolutions.
E. Key figures include Mary Shelley's mother and father among others.
2. Romanticism
A. Characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature known as the “sublime.”
B. Stressed the importance of emotion over reason.
C. Key themes of Romantic literature: libertarianism, the supernatural, a taste for the exotic, individualism, and isolation.
	Feb. 3 Notes
I. Frankenstein (1831)
1. Victor’s early studies of Natural Philosophy are informed by the following:
A. Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535): magician and philosopher best known for Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1510), a systematic exposition of occult (defined here as “hidden”) knowledge in Renaissance Europe.
B. Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus: see page 268 of Frankenstein.


II. Gothic fiction
1. European gothic spans the last third of the 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th. The pinnacle of popularity occurs around the end of the 18th century.
2. Characteristics of gothic fiction:
A. A vulnerable woman trapped in a remote and exotic location: usually a ruined church, abbey, or castle. This woman is at the mercy of a menacing male figure that she is simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by.
B. The supernatural.
C. A perhaps unconscious focus on the breaking free of repressed drives and feelings.
D. Inclusion of sexually overblown metaphor.
E. Murder, madness, and mayhem intended to titillate the reader.
3. Popular gothic works
A. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764).
B. Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).
C. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796).


III. The Rime of the Ancyent Mariner
1. Published 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the lead text in Lyrical Ballads, and referenced by Walton on page 21 as an example of his cautious attitude towards exploration. A link to the full text of this poem is available on the eLearning Course Home Page.


	Feb. 6 - Feb. 8 Notes
I. Note the "kinship" between Victor and his creature mentioned in class
1. Characteristics that the creature shares with humanity:
A. He feels emotion.
B. He can be moved by human relationships.
C. He can be moved by music.
D. He can empathize with others, though he does not at first know how to define this feeling.
E. He is curious about himself and his world.
F. He wears clothing and has a human shape.
G. He holds opinions.
H. He shows critical and analytical thinking.
I. He is pained by the cold, and so on, though not to the same degree as a human.


II. The creature’s education
1. John Locke (1632-1704): In his “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690), Locke argues that at birth the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes.
A. Experience, for Locke, is of two kinds: sensation and reflection. Sensation tells us about the external world and reflection makes us conscious of our internal mental processes.
2. Paradise Lost (published in ten books in 1667; twelve books in 1674).
A. John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost concerns a War in Heaven in which the Archangel Lucifer (later Satan) leads a third of the angels in revolt against God. Cast into hell, Satan plots to lure Adam and Eve into disobedience against God.
B. The creature wants Victor to view him as a beloved Adam. Due to Victor’s abandonment, the creature comes to see himself instead as Satan.
3. Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
A. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): Like Walton's story in Frankenstein, Sorrows follows an epistolary (told through letters) format. Werther is romantically attracted to Lotte. Lotte, though, is engaged to Albert and does not return Werther’s advances. Following his wedding to Lotte, Albert must leave town. Werther again professes his love for Lotte and is turned away. Werther shoots himself.
B. An example of the “Sturm and Drang” (“Storm and Stress”) literary movement in Germany. This movement, like Romanticism, stressed feeling and emotion over rationalism.
4. Parallel Lives (c. 100 AD).
A. Plutarch (45-120 AD): Lives contains 46 parallel biographies arranged in pairs (each pair juxtaposes a Greek and Roman figure). The last four lives do not follow this arrangement.
B. By comparing the lives of the noble Greeks and Romans, a reader was to be inspired to high moral and intellectual ideals.