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The Science of Life and Death in "Frankenstein" de Sharon Ruston

The Science of Life and Death in "Frankenstein"

Autor Sharon Ruston
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 13 ian 2022
The first book to compile the historical scientific and medical thought that influenced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

What is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley. But how did Shelley and her fellow Romantic writers incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science and medicine?

The Science of Life and Death in "Frankenstein" is the first book to synthesize the scientific and medical thinking about life and death during Mary Shelley’s lifetime. Sharon Ruston explores the contemporary scientific basis behind Victor Frankenstein’s idea that life and death were merely ‘ideal bounds’ he could transgress in the making of the Creature. Ruston contextualizes the novel alongside the work of the key scientific and medical thinkers of the day, including John Abernethy, James Curry, Humphry Davy, John Hunter, William Lawrence, and Joseph Priestley.

The book also examines what Mary Shelley herself knew and believed about the boundaries of life and death. Interweaving images of the Frankenstein manuscript, portraits, medical instruments, and contemporary diagrams, Ruston shows how this extraordinary tale is steeped in historical scientific and medical thought.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781851245574
ISBN-10: 185124557X
Pagini: 192
Ilustrații: 32 color plates, 16 halftones
Dimensiuni: 159 x 235 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Editura: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Colecția Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Notă biografică

Sharon Ruston is chair in Romanticism in the English literature and creative writing department at Lancaster University.

Cuprins

Contents

Introduction
1Life and Death in Romantic Literature
2Vital Air
3Electric Life
4Vis Vitae (the Vital Principle)
5Raising the Dead
Afterword
Notes
Further Reading
Picture Credits
Index

Recenzii

“A beautifully cool and elegant survey of the contemporary science and medicine which young Mary Shelley wove so ingeniously into the dark gothic texture of her 1818 masterpiece. With quiet authority and wit, Sharon Ruston calmly assesses the wilder theories, the furious debates, the utopian hopes and the eye-watering experiments, which secretly shaped Frankenstein. Paradoxically, Ruston’s scholarship gives the Creature a whole new life beyond fiction.”

"But as Sharon Ruston’s brief and lively new book, The Science of Life and Death in 'Frankenstein,' makes vividly clear, the novel is thoroughly informed by, and a serious contribution to, early 19th- century debates about what it means for a clump of matter to be 'alive.'"

"Sharon Ruston’s The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein is a rich discussion on the nature of life itself and how people approached this subject in Mary
Shelley’s time. . . .  it reminds both lovers of Mary Shelley and those new to the topic of the complexity of creative artistry incredibly well, in combination with exciting research into the scientific."
 

Descriere

What is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley and her contemporaries.

But how did she, and her fellow Romantic writers, incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science, medicine and personal loss? This book is the first to compile the many attempts in science and medicine to account for life and death in Mary Shelley’s time.

It considers what her contemporaries thought of air, blood, sunlight, electricity and other elements believed to be most essential for living. Mary Shelley’s (and her circle’s) knowledge of science and medicine is carefully examined, alongside the work of key scientific and medical thinkers, including John Abernethy, James Curry, Humphry Davy, John Hunter, William Lawrence and Joseph Priestley. Frankenstein demonstrates what Mary Shelley knew of the advice given by medical practitioners for the recovery of persons drowned, hanged or strangled and explores the contemporary scientific basis behind Victor Frankenstein’s idea that life and death were merely ‘ideal bounds’ he could transgress in the making of the Creature. Interweaving images of the manuscript, portraits, medical instruments and contemporary diagrams into her narrative, Sharon Ruston shows how this extraordinary tale is steeped in historical scientific and medical thought exploring the fascinating boundary between life and death.