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FRANKENSTEIN Romanticism vs.

“The Enlightenment”

Dr. Stephen Ogden

LIBS 7005

“Technology, Invention & Power”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the signature text for our course’s title: the scientist Victor Frankenstein invents an artificial

(i.e. unnatural) creature to demonstrate the power of modern technology.

QUESTION 1: Does Frankenstein have a motive for technological invention besides demonstration of the power to do so?

QUESTION 2: Is this a legitimate criticism of limits in relation to science & technology?

IDEA and COUNTER-IDEA

“The Enlightenment” 18th C. ‘salon’ movement aggrandisingly self-titled, as

with its sub-title, “the Age of Reason”. ‘Intellectuals’

promoted reason, science, materialism, democracy, atomism.

the movement or line of thought which culminated in the 19th in the Industrial Revolution.

Romanticism Late 18th to mid-19th C counter-movement that

promoted sensation, aesthetic, Nature, and ‘divinity’.

painting, literature, music, philosophy

an explicitly anti-materialist, anti-science approach to the world.

The Enlightment Approach to ‘Nature’: plus ultra

 Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626)

Founder of the inductive approach to ‘natural philosophy’ = the empirical method = “science”."Science is the conquest of nature for the relief of Man's estate““Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his sole object.”“As woman’s womb had symbolically yielded to the forceps, so nature’s womb harbored secrets that through technology could be wrested from her grasp for use in the improvement of the human condition.”

The Romantic approach to Natura

“….Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.”

William Wordsworth

The Romantic sentiment. William Blake.

“The Lamb” “The Tyger”

William Blake Con’t

“Ancient of Days” Illustration: Paradise Lost

William Blake vs. Enlightenment Mock on, mock on, Voltaire,

Rousseau;Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!You throw the sand against the wind,And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a gemReflected in the beams divine;Blown back they blind the mocking eye,But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of DemocritusAnd Newton's Particles of LightAre sands upon the Red Sea shore,Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

THE SHELLEYSThe Romantics’ Power Couple

Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Shelley

Percy & Mary Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley one of England’s

supreme poets among the elite in world

literature “Prometheus

Unbound” “Ozymandias”

lyrical, deft, profound, idealistic.

Mary Shelley Daughter of Wm.

Godwin, an Enlightenment philosopher, & Mary Wollstonecraft, Enlightenment writer on what became ‘feminism’.

difficult childhood & rash adult decisions influenced her fiction.

A Binary at the turn of the 19th C.

Enlightenment

Science

Knowledge Reason Technology Machinery Power Control Man

Romanticism Anti-Science

Feeling + Experience Imagination Art: lit. + paintings Nature Love Harmony God