The monstrous science in 'Frankenstein': aspects of the posthuman

Abstract

The objective of this work is to investigate the ways in which the discoveries and the scientific thought in the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century (the period known as the Second Scientific Revolution) influenced the writing of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), as well as to analyze how this work presents aspects which contribute to the study of the posthuman. Frankenstein was written during a period of profound revolutions in philosophical and scientific thought that informed several elements present in the novel: the social theories of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Erasmus Darwin’s hypotheses about the origin of life, Luigi Galvani’s experiments with electricity, among others. On the other hand, in a contemporary perspective, Frankenstein is a work that inaugurates many aspects that would be read through the prism of the posthuman. When describing the possible (and terrible) consequences of the connection between the human sphere and those of the animal and of the technological, the novel problematizes the privileged position of man in nature. Considering the physical and biological features of the monster, Frankenstein’s wish in overcoming the limits of nature, and the complex relation between both characters regarding the binomial desire/freedom, the novel can be read as one of the greatest representatives of the concept of posthumanity in literature. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n47a1173

Keywords

• Frankenstein, ciência, pós-humano.