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Aims of the Course
- to study the novel in its historical context, the
themes of physical nature and human nature in it, and the ways in
which new views of nature emerged during the Enlightenment and Romantic
Era.
- to provide hands-on practical experience using instructional
technology to design and produce an intellectually gripping multimedia
study and post it on the WEB for the enjoyment and edification of
many. [Useful on your résumé, too.]
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First
published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a wonderfully
rich source for understanding the varied and shifting views of nature
and culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the
tranquil beauty of Lake Geneva to the awesome vastness of Mont Blanc,
physical nature is an active force throughout the work. Echoing the
ideas of Rousseau, the romantic poets, and landscape painters, the tale
celebrates the newly emerging view of nature as a source of inspiration,
contemplation, solace, and moral guidance. To live in harmony with nature
is the ideal to which humankind should strive.
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 Against
these positive associations, Shelley opposes the dangerous, promethean
longings of men like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and her protagonist,
Victor Frankenstein, whose quests to discover nature’s secrets and
to control the power therein can lead to dreadful outcomes, as Victor’s
experiments bear out. The result is the passage of Frankenstein’s
creature from innocence to evil, from simple being to monster and victim—a
tragic transformation enacted according to the principles of sensationalist
psychology and the notion of innate human goodness overwhelmed by a corrupt
social environment. Behind the scenes, the true animators of the creature
are Locke and Rousseau. |
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 The
chief challenge to understanding this novel is to grasp the rich texture
of literary allusion and cultural history that it contains. Here, multimedia
technology can offer welcome assistance. To understand, for example, that
the creature’s initial mental state is a personification of the Lockean
tabula rasa, pertinent passages in the novel can be linked
to appropriate selections from Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding
(1690) and Thoughts on Education (1692). |
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to Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1759)
and Emile (1762) can reveal Shelley’s adaptation of his positive
view of human nature, his critique of corrupt society, and his model of
education. |
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 Providing
background on the early feminist writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, the
author’s mother, will make it easier to grasp the origins and complexity
of Mary Shelley’s representations of gender: how she juxtaposed traditional
associations—nature as female, science as male; women as comforters,
men as actors—with a novel portrait of Victor whom she endowed with
both female and male sensibilities. |
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William Wordsworth
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 Other
possiblibilities include the juxtapositions of images, text, and music.
To complement selections from the romantic poetry of Wordsworth, Byron,
and Percy Bysshe Shelley, there will be paintings and print images of
the alpine setting of the novel, of Mont Blanc, and its vast glacier,
the Mere de Glace.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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| These textual and visual sources
provide striking evidence on the growing fascination with mountain communities
as reservoirs of virtuous living and with mountain peaks as sites of pristine
wilderness, at once inspiring and humbling. |
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Selections from Beethoven and
other composers can illustrate the musical expression of romantic sensibility. |
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| Finally,
cuts from film versions of the story can be used and compared both for
humor and to underscore a number of interpretive points. From the Boris
Karloff classic of 1935 to Kenneth Branagh’s recent rendition, films
tell us less about the novel than about popular culture of our own century. |
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Robert DeNiro as the Creature in Kenneth Branagh's film,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein of 1994 |
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| More importantly, historical
understanding requires effort and imagination to see the world as it appeared
to Shelley and her readers and to grasp the meanings in the work that
made sense to them. |
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 This
multimedia study is the aim of History 257, Computing Applications in
History and the Humanities. The emphasis throughout will be on learning
to use instructional technology to produce an intellectually compelling
historical study. As we proceed with the reading of the novel, other
primary sources, and historical accounts, students will form teams of
two or three to work collaboratively to acquire experience with the
various tasks of research, design, and production—from collecting
evidence and digitizing images to using Photoshop and Dreamweaver to
create web pages.
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