scholarly journals Dr. Frankestein and the Birth of Horror

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-0
Author(s):  
Andrey Vaganov
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Common Noun ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Common

In the spring of 1818, a novel was published in England, which became the starting point of a new literary genre. The name of the discovered type of literature is sci-fi horror. The creator of sci-fi horror – Mary Shelley – was at that time only 21 years old. Even the title of the novel became today the common noun is “Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus”. “Archetype of horror”– this is how literary critics say about this work. The article attempts to prove and show that the entire plot of the novel is based on discoveries made at that time in the science of electrical phenomena. The article also tells about experiments with electricity, conducted by scientists in the 18th – early 19th centuries, and their perception by contemporaries. Thewhole structure, narrative of the novel, its rhetoric and even expressive artistic means are all works on the idea of bringing the natural-scientific basis under the absolutely seemingly fantastic plan. But, moreover, the novel can be viewed as a work of genius, foreseeing the emergence of what will be called molecular biology and genetic engineering.

scholarly journals THE NOVEL «RESURRECTION» BY LEO TOLSTOY AS AN EPIC – THE AUTHOR’S APPROACH TO THE IMAGE OF FACTS OF CONTEMPORANEITY AND THEIR APPRAISAL

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-138
Author(s):  
Nadezhda G. Mikhnovets
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Value System ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
The Common

The novel «Resurrection» by Leo Tolstoy It is regarded as an epic one in the article. What is attributed to its specific features, includes – the fundamental importance of the common, folkish in the value system of the book, as well as the encyclopedic coverage of the late 19th century Russian life. What became the starting point for considering the material, is raising the problematic question of the inevitable contradiction between the objective re-creation of contemporaneity and the heightened subjectivity of Leo Tolstoy’s late creative work, which the increased ethical pathos is characteristic of. The article argues that the «removal» of the contradiction is due to the nature of the novelist’s approach to depicting the facts of contemporaneity. This approach implies the scale of generalisations, the correlation of the facts of contemporary life with folkish life, immersion of the facts in a voluminous historical and cultural context, including the historical and literary one. It is stressed that the author’s subjective coverage of St. Petersburg life paradoxically becomes a handwriting of the image of an objective picture. This is due to the fact that the author, who describes and evaluates the processes of contemporary life from the point of view of substantial and «due», relies on the folkish «view of things». In general, the coverage and assessment of trends in the development of contemporary Russian society are given in the novel «Resurrection» in an epic perspective.

scholarly journals The Metamorphosis of the Myth of Alchemy: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-127
Author(s):  
Asunción López-Varela Azcárate ◽  
Estefanía Saavedra
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
William Godwin ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Starting Point

This article takes as starting point the myth of alchemy in Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, often interpreted as a warning of the risks and dangers of science and technology demonized in the form of the creature. Set in the Romantic period, the paper argues that the novel stages an ambiguous relationship between the advances in natural science and the philosophical and spiritual concerns that Mary Shelley inherited from her father, the philosopher William Godwin, which she discussed with her husband, the poet Percy B. Shelley. In the context of contemporary interdisciplinary discourses that contemplate ‘consilience’ between the humanities and the sciences, this paper offers a reading of Frankenstein and of Percy B. Shelley’s essay “A Defence of Poetry” as critical of empirical science in their ambiguous positioning with regards to alchemy and contemporary science. Furthermore, the research seeks to establish links with eco-cybernetic theories which bring to the fore a renewed interest on humanistic aspects.

scholarly journals Poéticas de la distancia en la literatura argentina: ficciones maternas en obras de Sylvia Molloy y de Reina Roffé

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Marta Urtasun
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Literatura Argentina ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Reina Roffe

Resumen: En este trabajo, analizamos y valoramos laemergencia de ciertas “poéticas de la distancia” en textosliterarios que constituyen fábulas o ficciones maternas,que atraviesan la literatura argentina con operacionesdiscursivas sobre el género, el recuerdo y la memoriadesde una lengua- Madre. Llamamos “ficciones maternas”a aquellos relatos que cuestionan algunos discursosfundantes y canónicos como el de la maternidad y la sexualidad.En esas ficciones, la voz de los hijos construyeun discurso sobre el de las voces de las madres, en tantofigura arquetípica del sistema patriarcal. En ese marco,leeremos la nouvelle “La madre de Mary Shelley” (2011),de Reina Roffé y la novela El común olvido de la argentinaSilvia Molloy (2002/2011), ambas escritoras argentinas,como relatos en los que las madres son representadas enuna tensión entre la ausencia, la exclusión y el enigmamediadas por las narraciones de sus hijos. Esas vocesdesplegarán una lengua- Madre, entendida como prácticapolítica e ideológica, que no sólo es la que origina otraslenguas sino que, desde lo fragmentario y disperso, permitepensar “cómo se llega a tener madre, tener patria y tenerlengua”***. Por eso, las fábulas maternas nos permitenreflexionar qué ocurre con las operaciones discursivasque los escritores hacen con su propia lengua, cuandoescriben desde otros espacios simbólicos.Palabras clave: ficciones maternas, literatura argentina,Sylvia Molloy, Reina RofféPoetics of Distance in Argentinian Literature:Maternal Fictions in Works by Sylvia Molloy andReina RofféAbstract: This paper analyzes and values the emergenceof a certain “poetic distance” in literary texts thatconstitute maternal fables or fictions, sowing throughoutArgentinian literature discursive operations on gender,memory and a Mother- language. We call “maternalfictions” those stories that question some foundationaland canonical speeches like motherhood and sexuality. Inthis fiction, the voice of the child constructs a discourseon top of the voices of mothers as archetypal figures ofthe patriarchal system. In this context, we will read thenouvelle “Mary Shelley’s Mother” (2011), by Reina Roffé,and the novel The Common Neglect by Argentinian SilviaMolloy (2002/2011), both Argentinian writers, as stories inwhich mothers are represented in a tension interspersingabsence, exclusion and enigma in narratives by their children.Those voices deploy a Mother- language, defined asa political and ideological practice, which is not only theorigin of other languages but which, on the basis of fragmentationand sparseness, suggests “how you get to havea mother tongue, a homeland and a language.” Therefore,maternal fables allow us to reflect on what happens to thediscursive operations by writers with their own language,when writing from other symbolic spaces.Keywords: maternal fictions, Argentinian literature,Sylvia Molloy, Reina Roffé

The Still Life of Objects – Heidegger, Schapiro, and Derrida reconsidered

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-102
Author(s):  
KErstin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Still Life ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
Vincent Van Gogh ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
Critical Intervention ◽  
The Given

Kerstin Thomas revaluates the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida, concerning a painting of shoes by Vincent Van Gogh. The starting point for this dispute was the description and analysis of things and artworks developed in his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art”. In discussing Heidegger’s account, the art historian Meyer Schapiro’s main point of critique concerned Heidegger’s claim that the artwork reveals the truth of equipment in depicting shoes of a peasant woman and thereby showing her world. Schapiro sees a striking paradox in Heidegger’s claim for truth, based on a specific object in a specific artwork while at the same time following a rather metaphysical idea of the artwork. Kerstin Thomas proposes an interpretation, which exceeds the common confrontation of philosophy versus art history by focussing on the respective notion of facticity at stake in the theoretical accounts of both thinkers. Schapiro accuses Heidegger of a lack of concreteness, which he sees as the basis for every truth claim on objects. Thomas understands Schapiro’s objections as motivated by this demand for a facticity, which not only includes the work of art, but also investigator in his concrete historical perspective. Truth claims under such conditions of facticity are always relative to historical knowledge, and open to critical intervention and therefore necessarily contingent. Following Thomas, Schapiro’s critique shows that despite his intention of giving the work of art back its autonomy, Heidegger could be accused of achieving quite the opposite: through the abstraction of the concrete, the factual, and the given to the type, he actually sets the self and the realm of knowledge of the creator as absolute and not the object of his knowledge. Instead, she argues for a revaluation of Schapiro’s position with recognition of the arbitrariness of the artwork, by introducing the notion of factuality as formulated by Quentin Meillassoux. Understood as exchange between artist and object in its concrete material quality as well as with the beholder, the truth of painting could only be shown as radically contingent. Thomas argues that the critical intervention of Derrida who discusses both positions anew is exactly motivated by a recognition of the contingent character of object, artwork and interpretation. His deconstructive analysis can be understood as recognition of the dynamic character of things and hence this could be shown with Meillassoux to be exactly its character of facticity – or factuality.

L’absence chez Michel Butor. L’Emploi du temps et Degrés

2012 ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Michał Mrozowicki
Keyword(s):  
Human Memory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
The City

Michel Butor, born in 1926, one of the leaders of the French New Novel movement, has written only four novels between 1954 and 1960. The most famous of them is La Modification (Second thoughts), published in 1957. The author of the paper analyzes two other Butor’s novels: L’Emploi du temps (Passing time) – 1956, and Degrés (Degrees) – 1960. The theme of absence is crucial in both of them. In the former, the novel, presented as the diary of Jacques Revel, a young Frenchman spending a year in Bleston (a fictitious English city vaguely similar to Manchester), describes the narrator’s struggle to survive in a double – spatial and temporal – labyrinth. The first of them, formed by Bleston’s streets, squares and parks, is symbolized by the City plan. During his one year sojourn in the city, using its plan, Revel learns patiently how to move in its different districts, and in its strange labyrinth – strange because devoid any centre – that at the end stops annoying him. The other, the temporal one, symbolized by the diary itself, the labyrinth of the human memory, discovered by the narrator rather lately, somewhere in the middle of the year passed in Bleston, becomes, by contrast, more and more dense and complex, which is reflected by an increasinly complex narration used to describe the past. However, at the moment Revel is leaving the city, he is still unable to recall and to describe the events of the 29th of February 1952. This gap, this absence, symbolizes his defeat as the narrator, and, in the same time, the human memory’s limits. In Degrees temporal and spatial structures are also very important. This time round, however, the problems of the narration itself, become predominant. Considered from this point of view, the novel announces Gerard Genette’s work Narrative Discourse and his theoretical discussion of two narratological categories: narrative voice and narrative mode. Having transgressed his narrative competences, Pierre Vernier, the narrator of the first and the second parts of the novel, who, taking as a starting point, a complete account of one hour at school, tries to describe the whole world and various aspects of the human civilization for the benefit of his nephew, Pierre Eller, must fail and disappear, as the narrator, from the third part, which is narrated by another narrator, less audacious and more credible.

The Castle of Otranto

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horace Walpole
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Game Changer ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Grotesque

‘Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions’ The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride–to–be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents.

Man and Wife

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilkie Collins
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Country House ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Marriage Laws ◽  
Woman In White ◽  
The Moonstone ◽  
Status Of Women

This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questions the deeply inequitable marriage laws of his day. Man and Wife examines the plight of a woman who, promised marriage by one man, comes to believe that she may inadvertently have gone through a form of marriage with his friend, as recognized by the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. From this starting-point Collins develops a radical critique of the values and conventions of Victorian society. Collins had already developed a reputation as the master of the 'sensation novel', and Man and Wife is as fast moving and unpredictable as The Moonstone and The Woman in White. During the novel the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister as the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder.

CAEP/9-agreed certification requirement for the Aeroplane CO2Emissions Standard: a comment on ICAO Cir 337

2016 ◽  
Vol 120 (1226) ◽  
pp. 693-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.E. Green ◽  
J.A. Jupp
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Efficiency ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Civil Aviation ◽  
Aircraft Emissions ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Fuel Burn ◽  
Aircraft Fuel ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Range Equation ◽  
Main Criticism

ABSTRACTThe International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Circular Cir 337 is the first step towards ICAO establishing an Aeroplane CO2Emissions Standard to form part of Annex 16, Volume III to the Chicago Convention. It describes itself as ‘a work in progress’. This paper reviews Cir 337 against the background of flight physics, the published literature on aircraft fuel burn and CO2emissions and the current practices of the aircraft and engine manufacturers and the airline operators. We have taken, as our starting point, the aim of ICAO to reduce the fuel used per revenue tonne-kilometre performed and argue that the Breguet range equation, which captures all the relevant flight physics, should be the basis of the metric system underpinning the standard. Our overall conclusion is that Cir 337 provides an excellent basis for the initial regulation of aviation's CO2emissions and, further in the future, for developing measures to increase the fuel efficiency of the operational side of civil aviation. Our main criticism of the circular in its current form is that it does not address the ICAO goal of reducingfuel used per revenue tonne-kilometre performedand makes no reference to payload. This defect could be eliminated simply by omission of the exponent 0.24 of the Reference Geometric Factor (RGF) in the formula for the metric given in Chapter 2 (paragraph 2.2) of the circular. Retaining theRGFto the power unity in the metric and multiplying it by an appropriate value of the effective floor loading would convert it to what the 37thAssembly of ICAO called for – a statement of fuel used per revenue tonne-kilometre performed. Finally, correlating the amended metric against design range, as determined from the measured specific air range and the key certificated masses, provides a sound scientific basis for an initial regulation to cap passenger aircraft emissions.

“Tlatelolco me bautizó”: Literary Renewal and the Neoliberal Transition

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-286
Author(s):  
Samuel Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Conservative Restoration ◽  
Social Privilege

This essay takes as its starting point the relative lack of a contender to the “novel of ′68” in Mexico. I argue that Jorge Volpi's 2003 El fin de la locura constitutes the final writing of such a novel, to appear some 35 years after the original events of that year. The double “renewal” pursued by this work is explored both as an intended restoration of the literary to a place of social privilege after a period of decline, and also as a conservative restoration of order following the revolutionary sequences of the 20th century. However, I argue, the novel cannot finally commit to artistic renewal without also confirming the “madness” of the century; the literary renewal pursued in Volpi's text thus becomes the very political renewal that the author seeks to avoid.

The Diaspora of the Novel

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.

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