Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's "Wet Ungenial Summer".
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Bill Phillips [1]
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[1] Universitat de Barcelona
Universitat de Barcelona
Barcelona, España
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- Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 28, Nº 2 (December 2006), 2006, págs. 59-68
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has attracted a wide variety of interpretations, ranging from the Feminist, to the Marxist, to the Psychoanalytic. Some of these interpretations have relied on the scantiest of evidence while others are simply mistaken in their analysis of the period. Ecocriticism reminds us of the importance of nature in our understanding of literary and cultural texts, and this is never more appropriate than in an analysis of Frankenstein. It is well known that the idea for the novel emerged at the Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, during the stormy month of June 1816. So much is explained by Mary Shelley herself. It is not well known, however, that the stormy weather was the result of an Indonesian volcano, which affected the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere for three years, leading to crop failure, riots and starvation. Mary Shelley’s other writings of the period, as well as Frankenstein, reveal her interest in, and concern for, nature and the countryside. To a large extent, the novel is a reflection of these concerns at a time when the natural world was in crisis.
