자료: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
Composition
How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?[2]
During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.[3] Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, aged 18, and her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn. Amongst other subjects, the conversation turned to the experiments of the 18th-centurynatural philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin, who was said to have animated dead matter, and togalvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or assembled body parts to life.[4] Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company also amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale.
Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary Godwin conceived the idea for Frankenstein:
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.[5]
She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into a full-fledged novel.[6] She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life".[7] Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus, two legendary horror tales originated from this one circumstance.[citation needed]
Mary's and Percy Bysshe Shelley's manuscripts for the first three-volume edition in 1818 (written 1816–1817), as well as Mary Shelley's fair copy for her publisher, are now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bodleian acquired the papers in 2004, and they belong now to the Abinger Collection.[8] On 1 October 2008, the Bodleian published a new edition of Frankenstein which contains comparisons of Mary Shelley's original text with Percy Shelley's additions and interventions alongside. The new edition is edited by Charles E. Robinson: The Original Frankenstein (ISBN 978-1851243969).[9]
[edit]Publication
Mary Shelley completed her writing in May 1817, and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published on 1 January 1818 by the small London publishing house of Harding, Mavor & Jones. It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th century first editions. The novel had been previously rejected by Percy Bysshe Shelley's publisher, Charles Ollier and by Byron's publisher John Murray.
The second edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker), and this time credited Mary Shelley as the author.
On 31 October 1831, the first "popular" edition in one volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn& Richard Bentley. This edition was quite heavily revised by Mary Shelley, and included a new, longer preface by her, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition tends to be the one most widely read now, although editions containing the original 1818 text are still being published. In fact, many scholars prefer the 1818 edition. They argue that it preserves the spirit of Shelley's original publication (see Anne K. Mellor's "Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach" in the W.W. Norton Critical edition).
[edit]Name origins
[edit]Frankenstein's creature
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Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give it a name, which gives it a lack of identity. Instead it is referred to by words such as "monster," "dæmon," "fiend," and "it." When Frankenstein converses with the monster in Chapter 10, he addresses it as "Devil," "Vile insect," "Abhorred monster," "fiend," "wretched devil," and "abhorred devil."
During a telling Shelley did of Frankenstein, she referred to the creature as "Adam".[11]Shelley was referring to the first man in the Garden of Eden, as in her epigraph:
- Did I request thee, Maker from my clay
- To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
- From darkness to promote me?
- John Milton, Paradise Lost (X.743–5)
The monster has often been mistakenly called "Frankenstein." In 1908 one author said "It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent persons, as describing some hideous monster...".[12] Edith Wharton's The Reef(1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein."[13] David Lindsay's "The Bridal Ornament," published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein." After the release of James Whale's popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the monster itself as "Frankenstein." A reference to this occurs inBride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Some justify referring to the Creature as "Frankenstein" by pointing out that the Creature is, so to speak, Victor Frankenstein's offspring. Also, one might say that the monster is the invention of Doctor Frankenstein, and inventions are often named after the person who invented them.
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