Hey Everyone,
I’m sorry the lecture got rushed at the end. I didn’t even get to Mary Shelley! But please keep in mind the importance of The Enlightenment in our discussion of Frankenstein and then throughout the course even though we will skip almost a 150 years when we get to The Outsiders. If as Baxter posited “adolescence” is a response and a cure for the idea of the savage child (the wild child), then we need look to the Enlightenment (and later Romanticism) to see where the importance of the child in nature (or the garden child) arises and to understand what work that idea did for Enlightenment and then for the 19th century as the western world pushed towards the modern era. “Adolescence” as Baxter tells us is a way of gaining more control over an idea about youth and development (i.e. the youth’s ties to the natural and the primitive). Looking at Frankenstein and thinking about the Enlightenment might help us to see what is at stake in that idea of the natural child or the youth in nature. What are the possibilities and what are the dangers of such a formulation. Particularly try to keep in mind the importance The Enlightenment placed on the centrality of the mind and reason. Particularly as you continue to read Frankenstein, try to keep in mind some of the ideas of Rousseau’s Emile of letting the youth develop in accordance with nature and not attacking worldly culture or book learning before reason and body have developed. Some questions to consider:
1) How does the centrality of the mind and reason help to shape Victor Frankenstein’s idea of childhood, youth, and the monster?
2) Are there places in the novel where we can see the mind and the body being pitted against each other?
3) To what degree does the novel suggest that too much education or too much education too soon or just too much of the wrong education contributes to the creation of monstrosity?
On Wednesday, I’ll say some more about the author, and hopefully we can have a conversation at least about the first half of the novel, starting with these questions.
Group Assignments for the final project have been posted. You can find them by scrolling to the bottom of the syllabus page. If you were absent from class today, you have been automatically assigned to a group. These groups should be considered close to final. Any concerns about these groups must be registered with me by 5pm today. After that time, the groups will be final.
Lastly, I emailed our last Frankenstein discussion. The article [“Liberty, Equality, Monstrosity, Revolutionizing the Family in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” by David A Hedrich Hirsh in Monster Theory: Reading Culture Ed by Jeffrey Jerome] is for the February 23rd class. Please let me know if you did not receive it. You are only responsible for reading chapter 6 (it’s the last of the three chapters in the scan). It’s pages 115-140 (or if you’re counting the pages of the pdf it’s 43-68.