TEXT PRINT CULTURE| Frankenstein and Romantic Visual Culture

This lecture will be co-hosted by the Literature Team of the School of Foreign Studies and the SUFE Centre for the Study of Text and Print Culture

 讲座摘要/ Abstract 

In this talk I will look at the rich range of visual sources and traditions which may have influenced Mary Shelley’s construction of her famous monster. Despite the novel’s huge visual legacy, there has been no serious critical work on the specifically visual dimension of the text. Yet, as Judith Halberstam states, ‘The monster in Frankenstein establishes visual horror as the main standard by which the monster judges and is judged’ (Skin Shows). I will propose that Victor’s primary offence is aesthetic, and that the creature is indeed an unthinkable or uncanny composite of many different types of ‘visual horror’. I will draw on wide range of Romantic media from paintings to printed book illustrations, and will consider topics such as giants, necromancy, ghosts, Romantic Satanism, the rebel slave, ‘freak’ shows, scientific and anatomical illustrations, and caricature.

 主讲人简介/ CV 

Ian Haywood is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Research in Romanticism at the University of Roehampton. He is also leader of the ‘Romantic Illustration Network’ and served as President of BARS (British Association for Romantic Studies) from 2015 to 2019. Most of his research now focuses on the visual culture of the period 1750-1850, especially political caricature. He is the author of The Revolution in Popular Literature (2004), Bloody Romanticism (Palgrave 2006), Romanticism and Caricature (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and The Rise of Victorian Caricature (Palgrave 2020). In April 2019 he gave a series of lectures hosted by the University of Tapei, Taiwan, and in October 2019 he went on a lecture tour of Japan at the invitation of the Japanese Association of English Romanticism. 

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