Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-221
Author(s):  
Erin Webster-Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Fantastic

O olho, o narrador e o monstro

1989 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Leopoldo Comitti
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Fantastic

A reading of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, under the perspective of the Fantastic and taking as a starting point psychoanalylic theories. Leitura do romance Frankenstein, de Mary Shelley, sob a perspectiva do Fantástico e a partir de um instrumental teórico da Psicanálise.

scholarly journals Predicting the Patriarchal Politics of Pandemics From Mary Shelley to COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Hunt Botting
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Octavia Butler ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Last Man

I examine the predictive powers of the political science fictions of Mary Shelley, Octavia Butler, and Margaret Atwood for understanding the patriarchal—or men-dominant—dynamics of the politics of pandemics in the twenty-first century. Like her literary followers in post-apocalyptic plague literature, Butler and Atwood, Shelley foresaw that the twenty-first century would be the age of lethal pandemics. Their post-apocalyptic fictions also projected the ways that patriarchal and authoritarian forms of populism could shape the cultural circumstances that can turn a local outbreak of a new and deadly contagious disease, like COVID-19, into a politically chaotic and economically devastating global plague. Modern feminist political science fiction born of Shelley's great pandemic novel The Last Man (1826) is seemingly clairvoyant not because of any supernatural powers of the authors but rather because of their studied attention to the wisdom of plague literature, the lessons of epidemic history, and the political dynamics of patriarchy and populism.

scholarly journals Literary visions of post-apocalyptic worlds in the works of Mary Shelley, Margaret Atwood and Maggie Gee

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (46) ◽  
pp. 405-425
Author(s):  
Gönül Bakay
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Severe Attack ◽  
Ecological Awareness ◽  
Seminal Article ◽  
Cautionary Tales ◽  
The Last Man ◽  
Destructive Potential

Once hailed as the pinnacle of evolutionary progress, the human subject has more recently been under severe attack due to the destructive potential that has been unleashed by humans, especially in the last two hundred years. As a result, contemporary literature and art is replete with images of a utopia without humans. Many writers see humans, or rather human destructiveness, as the real plague on the planet and offer visions of utopia placed in the post-apocalyptic post-human era. Drawing on Patricia Vieira’s seminal article titled “Utopia and Dystopia in the Age of the Anthropocene”, I will first discuss how Mary Shelley portrayed ecological awareness in her The Last Man. I will then move on to examine how increasing ecological destruction leads to (post)-apocalyptic visions in the works of Margaret Atwood and Maggie Gee. My aim in juxtaposing two contemporary writers with Mary Shelley is to show that despite their different socio-historical contexts, these women writers have produced works that can not only be read as visionary and cautionary tales but that also promote heightened ecological awareness as an antidote to destructive and – ultimately – self-destructive tendencies of humankind.

A Parliament of Monsters: Romantic Nonhumans and Victorian Erasure

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Geier
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
Bartholomew Fair

Shows the robust nonhuman concern in Romantic works through new readings of Mary Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Clare, and Coleridge. The chapter traces these themes and forms of threatened, abject life as an expansive multispecies community of suffering. These works interrogate the weakness of expressive forms, performing the very captivity they lament. Wordsworth’s poem on the Bartholomew Fair is a fulcrum to the London studies in the book. These forms of expression are then examined in Dickens’s narratology and the narrator-object Esther in Bleak House.

Aesthetic Dilemmas of Adaptation and the Politics of Subjectivity: Animating the Chinese ClassicJourney to the West

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengcheng You
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
National Allegory ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Monkey King

This article reviews four major Chinese animated adaptations based on the classic Journey to the West. It shows how these adaptations, spanning four historical phases of modern China, encapsulate changes in Chinese national identity. Close readings underpin a developmental narrative about how Chinese animated adaptations of this canonical text strive to negotiate the multimodal expressions of homegrown folklore traditions, technical influences of western animation, and domestic political situations across time. This process has identified aesthetic dilemmas around adaptations that oscillate between national allegory and individual destiny, verisimilitude and the fantastic quest for meaning. In particular, the subjectivisation of Monkey King on the screen, embodying the transition from primitivistic impulse, youthful idealism and mature practicality up to responsible stewardship, presents how an iconic national figure encapsulates the real historical time of China.

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