Analysis Of Coleridge's Beliefs In Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

1321 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Frankenstein mary shelley 1818 analysis

Texts of the Romanticism era aim to emancipate the ideological values of the enlightenment in revolt to the products of the Age of Reason and exalted the limitless boundaries of creativity through the immeasurable capability of the imagination. The Romantic artist indulges in the gratification they can derive from the supreme faculty of the mind, allowing engagement of social and moral issues through what Coleridge saw as the ‘esemplastic power’ of the imagination. Coleridge’s Beliefs, as one of the earliest romantic poets, heavily influenced the idealized perception of subsequent Romantics artists. Coleridge’s greatest contribution to the construction of these values was manifested in the autobiographic discourse of Biographia Literature, …show more content…

Specifically the act of galvanisation became of point of moral foreground resulting Shelley’s underlying message of rejection for rationalism. The limitless potential of the imagination results in the suspension of disbelief allowing Shelley to disclose the ‘human interest’ ‘through a sembelance of truth’ (Coleridge, 2004) , acting as a hyperbolic moral standpoint against ideals of scientific rationalism. Shelley illustrates this issue through the character framing of Ernest and Frankenstein, manipulating the audience into viewing characters which become representations of ideological thinking. Earnest, portrayed as a romantic individual “full of activity and spirit” carrys the trope of the innocent child as he is blissful to works of rationalist science and ‘looks upon the study as an odious fetter’. Whilst Frankenstein believes that ‘Often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation” portraying Frankenstein’s curiosity for modern-day rationalism as a character flaw forcing himself into a state of contempt as his arrogance or desire to become greater than Nature results in the melodramatic destruction of his life. Through Shelley’s characters she is able to convey enlightenment as the “cold-hearted attempt to extort knowledge from nature” through the beliefs of Frankenstein placing man above nature, consequently disturbing the symbiotic natural order of coexistence where science “improvised on nature as a great instrument”. Secondly Shelley subverts the epistemological values through the glorification of the natural power. Shelly plays with the Construction of Frankenstein’s

Show More
Related

  • A Comparison Of The Blade Runner And Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And Blade Runner

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although the texts show a difference in societal values, both explore similar aspects of humanity to show that human nature is perpetual regardless of context. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley scrutinizes the Enlightenment era’s pursuit for progress and knowledge as it is seen as morally chaotic for overstepping the natural order idealised by the Romantics. Victor F’Stein’s ambition to overpower the boundaries of nature by attempting to take up God’s role as the creator is enunciated in the metaphor “many excellent natures should owe their being to me”. Victor’s hubris and ambition reflects aspects of the Enlightenment – Shelley criticises the attempts of the age to control and empower natural processes, embodied in Galvani’s experimentation with animal electricity. Victor F’Stein represents humanity’s hubristic ambitions and fondness for knowledge.

    Read More

  • The Values Of Society In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    431 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, values of society are clearly expressed. In this particular society and culture, a great value is placed on ideologies of individuals and their contribution to society. In order to highlight these values, Shelley utilizes the character of Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the main character of the novel, and with his alienation, he plays a significant role that reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and moral values of individualism and use in society. This is done through Victor’s actions of self-inflicted isolation.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein, Community, and the Individual

    1689 Words  | 4 Pages

    To begin our analysis, I will look to how Mary Shelley positions Victor Frankenstein's motivations to create life against natural laws within the ideas of individualism, as Victor can correlate directly to the educated human at the center of Enlightenment, Industrialism, and Romanticism values. With the burgeoning interest in scientific discovery during the Industrial Revolution "transform[ing] British culture" and "changing the world"(Lipking 2065), many concepts of society were also changed, which Shelley looked to explore through Victor's actions. Rooted in the scientifically curious spirit of Industrial England, Victor's attempt to create life can show many examples of how an importance of the individual acquisition of knowledge and accomplishment can disrupt society. Victor's...

    Read More

  • Comparison: Frankenstein & The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.

    Read More

  • Nature vs. Nurture in Frankenstein

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    Andrew Lustig proposed a great question to the readers of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, “How far should we go in out efforts to alter nature, including human nature? As stewards of God’s creation what are our responsibilities?” (Lustig 1) This question results in theme of nature vs. nurture in the novel. The nature vs. nurture debate is an important topic in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The two central characters, Victor Frankenstein and the creature that he creates; both, characters were raised differently. The nature and the nurture of their upbringing can be a cause of why they are, the way they are. Victor and his creature are subject to very different nurturing styles. Shelley also incorporates the representations of light and fire. This representation is key to the nature vs. nurture discussion in the novel.

    Read More

  • Who Is the Real Monster in Frankenstein?

    1708 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a nineteenth century literary work that delves into the world of science and the plausible outcomes of morally insensitive technological research. Although the novel brings to the forefront several issues about knowledge and sublime nature, the novel mostly explores the psychological and physical journey of two complex characters. While each character exhibits several interesting traits that range from passive and contemplative to rash and impulsive, their most attractive quality is their monstrosity. Their monstrosities, however, differ in the way each of the character’s act and respond to their environment.

    Read More

  • Mary Shelley Challenges Society in Frankenstein

    1219 Words  | 3 Pages

    Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s radical challenges to society’s structure and her own, and indeed her husband’s views as Romantics. By considering these vital influences on the text, we can see that in Shelley’s construction of the meaning in Frankenstein she encourages a life led as a challenge to dominant views.

    Read More

  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Critique of Masculinity

    1775 Words  | 4 Pages

    The idea for the novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to her one night when she was staying in the company of what has been called ‘her male coterie’, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley’s whole life seems to have been heavily influenced by men. She idolised her father, William Godwyn, and appears to have spent a good part of her life trying very hard to impress both him and her husband. There seems to have been a distinct lack of female influence, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having died weeks after her birth, being replaced by a neglectful step-mother. These aspects of her life are perhaps evident in her novel. The characters and plot of Frankenstein were perhaps influenced by Shelley’s conflicting feelings about the predominately masculine circle which surrounded her, and perhaps the many masculine traits that we see in novel were based upon those of the male figures in Shelley’s own life. In this essay I will attempt to show some of these traits.

    Read More

  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, was written during a period of dramatic revolution. The failed French Revolution and Industrial Revolution seriously mark the novel with hints of moral and scientific revolution. Through Frankenstein, Shelley sends out a clear message that morally irresponsible scientific development can unleash a monster that can destroy its creator.

    Read More

  • Romanticism in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    2058 Words  | 5 Pages

    Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.

    Read More

  • The Power of the Imagination and Its Relationship to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

    1950 Words  | 4 Pages

    The role of the imagination in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein is a vital when defining the work as Romantic. Though Shelley incorporates aspects that resemble the Enlightenment period, she relies on the imagination. The power of the imagination is exemplified in the novel through both Victor and the Creature as each embarks to accomplish their separate goals of scientific fame and accomplishing human relationships. The origin of the tale also emphasizes the role of the imagination as Shelley describes it in her “Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition (1831)”. Imagination in the text is also relatable to other iconic works of the Romantic Period such as S. T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria in which he defines Primary and Secondary imagination. The story as a whole is completely Romantic in that it is filled with impossibilities that seem to have come from a fairy tale. The imaginative quality of the plot itself is a far cry from the stiff subject matter of the Enlightenment period. Frankenstein is wholly a work of Romanticism both from the outside of the tale and within the plot. Shelley created the story in a moment of Primary imagination filling it with impossibilities that can only be called fantastical. Imagining notoriety leads Victor to forge the creature; the creature imagines the joy of having human relationships. The driving factor of the tale is the imagination: imagining fame, imagining relationships and imagining the satisfaction of revenge. Shelley’s use of the imagination is a direct contradiction to the themes of logic and reason that ruled the Enlightenment Period.

    Read More

  • Ethical Issues in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    This paper will concentrate on the definition of human nature, the controversy of morality and science, the limits to scientific inquiry, and how this novel ties in with today’s world. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein expresses human nature specifically through the character of the “Creature” and its development. The Creature has an opportunity to explore his surroundings, and in doing so he learns that human nature is to run away from something so catastrophic in looks. The Creature discovers that he must limit himself in what he does due to the response of humans because of his deformities. I feel that Mary Shelley tries to depict human nature as running away from the abnormal, which results in alienation of the “abnormal.”

    Read More

  • Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein: The Romantic Hero

    572 Words  | 2 Pages

    Shelley’s writing was heavily influenced by the artistic movement that emerged in the 19th century in England. One of her most popular novels, Frankenstein, features one of the key aspects of romanticism: the romantic hero. In the excerpt from this novel in Fiero’s The Humanistic Tradition, Dr. Frankenstein is shown to possess the qualities of said hero. The plot of Shelly’s Frankenstein highlights the unmanageable quest of Dr. Frankenstein’s attempt to overcome the decaying effects of death.

    Read More

  • Romanticism and Nature in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic science fiction novel written in the romantic era that focuses on the elements of life. The romantic era was sparked by the changing social environment, including the industrial revolution. It was a form of revolt against the scientific revolutions of the era by developing a form of literature that romanticize nature and giving nature godliness. This element of romanticized nature is a recurrent element in Frankenstein and is used to reflect emotions, as a place for relaxation and as foreshadowing. Frankenstein also includes various other elements of romanticism including strong emotions and interest in the common people.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Romanticism In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1270 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in 1818 during the Romanticism era. Romanticism describes the period of time from the late 18th century to the mid 19th century. This period was seen as a response to the Enlightenment; overall there was an increase in the desire to understand the world in an objective matter (lecture). Though Romanticism is commonly viewed as a literary and artistic movement, Mary Shelley gives evidence on the development of Europe in a historical sense through her novel, Frankenstein. Through the motifs and personal experiences of her characters, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gives insight on scientific development, emerging roles of women, and how the individual is viewed the

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Coleridge's Beliefs In Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Open Document