Abstract
Mary Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein is a pivotal work in the Western canon. Since its publication in 1818, the novel has been re-written and adapted many times. Shelley’s magnum opus sublimely evokes the postlapsarian condition of the fallen, while also capturing the imminent fear of technology, scientific progress and artificial procreation. The paper aims to explore the Frankenstein legacy and the development of Frankensteinian motifs in Atwood’s speculative fiction. More precisely, the paper focuses on The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The MaddAddam Trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), MaddAddam (2013), and The Heart Goes Last (2015), analyzing how postmodern literature recycles and incorporates elements from Frankenstein to reflect (on) contemporary anxieties and to insist on the fluid discursivity of monstrosity.
Highlights
The Frankensteinian legacyShelley’s iconic Frankenstein (1818) is a pivotal work in the Western canon and is ubiquitous in popular culture
Shelley’s penchant for teratological iconography and transgressive imagery pinnacles in her widely-celebrated magnum opus, Frankenstein, which continues to spawn an array of literary texts and is a source text for endless adaptations: as Rebecca Bauman notes, “Frankenstein has become a nexus, a node, a universe unto itself, spawning and inspiring new texts, new ideas, and new monsters” (2018, xix)
Frankenstein articulates an atavistic fear of scientific omnipotence and the precarious transhumanist2 potentialities of biosciences, which is a recurrent thematic concern in contemporary science fiction as well as posthumanist and dystopian texts
Summary
Mary Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein is a pivotal work in the Western canon. Shelley’s magnum opus sublimely evokes the postlapsarian condition of the fallen, while capturing the imminent fear of technology,. The paper aims to explore the Frankenstein legacy and the development of Frankensteinian motifs in Atwood’s speculative fiction. The paper focuses on The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The MaddAddam Trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), MaddAddam (2013), and The Heart Goes Last (2015), analyzing how postmodern literature recycles and incorporates elements from Frankenstein to reflect (on) contemporary anxieties and to insist on the fluid discursivity of monstrosity.
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