Postmodern Prometheus

The New York Times has a review of The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, by Peter Ackroyd. It is a new novel that re-imagines and retells Victor’s story in a more authentic context: that is, the one in which the author creates it. So, Percy Shelley shows up in the novel, for example. This sort of ‘postmodern’ version of Frankenstein, stripping away the stereotypes from the film history, is another version of what Shelley Jackson pursues in Patchwork Girl. In both cases, the stories seem to take off from Mary Shelley’s introduction, where she puts her own authorship up front, weaves it into the story: her hideous progeny is the writing, the creation of her novel. As you will see, Shelley Jackson runs with that strand. But she also remediates the novel with digital technology: in the way that all the various strands of story and history that inform or influence her vision of the novel are brought into her version, rather than edited or hidden.

Perhaps it is something like an essay that has been revised many times, but in which the final version contains all the versions in one. Why do this, you might ask?

But it is also worth asking you: have you also, before Patchwork Girl (and even if you have never before read such a text in digital form), read or viewed or played a text that was non-linear, that offered lots of material and options for reading, that had more than one place to go? That, at some level, in some form, invited the reader to become a writer? If so, then you have experienced what can be called “hypertext.”

For more on Shelley Jackson, you can go to her web site, Ineradicable Stain.

Intertextuality: Mutability

Percy Shelley’s poem from 1816, “Mutability,” which shows up in Victor’s narrative.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutablilty.

 

Intertextuality can be defined as the connection or implication of one (or more than one) text within a text. One version of this: an allusion. In the case of Shelley’s poem, the reference is a direct quotation (though the author is not named). Where it gets interesting, of course, is recognizing that the author of the poem is the novelist’s husband. Perhaps the best way to think about intertextuality and the stunning range of implications (texts referring to texts) is to consider almost any bumber sticker you might have seen. Usually, amazingly, some reference is made or assumed to another text, often another bumber sticker. So intertextuality demands or commands interpretation; it also reminds us that we read and interpret much of what we see in our world. A lesson we will consider as we explore the rich intertextuality in Shelley’s novel, and of her novel, is that we need to slow down and read the texts, illuminate and follow up on the implications of texts, in order to make sense of what we have in front of us. That doesn’t necessarily mean get the ‘right’ answer to the text; more that we need to be willing and able to follow the implications, trace the threads of the text (text originally means “woven thing”) in our creative effort to make something of what we are reading.

Consider: there isn’t only one way to read a bumber sticker–good ones, indeed, will open up to several possible readings. But it is possible to misread one.

Another type of intertextuality around the same scene in chapter X: reference to the imagery of sublime landscape. A Romantic painter from the same period in which Shelley is writing is Caspar David Freidrich. Think of this as a visual intertext that Shelley seems to be using in her writing–both as a matter of relevant philosophy (the sublime is a prominent idea in Romanticism) and perhaps as a method of style.

You are welcome to explore and furhter illuminate these intertexts, or any other you come upon in the novel, for your second writing project.

One final thought, for now. Can even think of intertextuality as inherent in our language–implications in any of the words that Shelley uses–given the history embedded in any word. Certainly a word unfamiliar to you such as “sublime”; but also familiar ones, such as “author” or “creator.” In this case, the intertetuality is part of its etymology. For more on that, consult one of the great tools for writing and critical reading: the OED. You can get to it electronically through the library reference database.

Some ‘machines’ you might find useful in your intertextual reading of Frankenstein:

Electronic Paradise Lost (Milton, 1667).

Electronic Bible (from UVA’s Electronic Text Center)

class discussion: 9/3

discussed the presence of reading and writing in Frankenstein thus far–where we noticed the acts or reading/writing being focused on in some way.

Shelley’s 1831 Introduction: apparent in how she focuses on the origin of the novel, her unwillingness to take credit for her autobiography, the ways in which she talks about her creative process of “inventing” the story of the novel in similar terms as found in Victor’s story of invention and creating–down to her reference “hideous progeny”

The frame/device of Walton’s letters: the familiarity and intimacy the letters establish, the “you” that addresses the reader, not just his sister

Also started to notice the presence of the writing itself: the different style and tone we see/hear in Walton or Victor. Reiterated that we will be focusing in this book on style as much as on the content: what we can learn from how the writing works.  For example: we discussed the length of Walton’s sentences, use of commas (creating a fluid, inviting narrative); the language/diction Victor uses in describing his desire to “penetrate” the secrets of nature.