Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein” — and “Blade Runner”
Henry Fuseli: Dream of Belinda
There is no lack of material on the Internet about this famous novel. Those of you doing the 2009-2012 HSC in NSW must compare it with Scott Ridley’s 1982 movie Blade Runner, which you will also find on this site. You must attend especially to the context in which each work emerged, issues of genre, and issues of language and technique, as well as of course forming ideas about the great themes each work embodies.
- The Literary Gothic is a site you will want to visit. See Shelley, Mary.
- My Hideous Progeny is a site devoted to the novel.
- You will find some essays by Kim A. Woodbridge of Maryland USA and others here.
- You will find quite a number of things via Google Books, for example Mary Shelley in Her Times edited by Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (Johns Hopkins University Press 2000).
- Mary Shelley: The Expert View comes from the BBC.
- The similarities between Frankenstein and Blade Runner are quite staggering, according to this site from Texas.
- This course-work site from a US university asks some interesting questions about Blade Runner, even if you may need some guidance with the pomo jargon…
Look at this essay: Frankenstein as Lucy (PDF).
Here is a beautiful site to look at: Nature, Beauty, and Power: The Romantics (Pitt State University). Another US university, Washington State, offers a plain no-nonsense introduction to Romanticism.
There is also Romanticism: an Overview on The Victorian Web. See especially Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (1818) — A Summary of Modern Criticism.
Two YouTube videos follow; if you are at school these may just be blank spaces! Try at home.
Kenneth Branagh 1994
Opening of Blade Runner
See also Studying the Gothic, or Emily Bronte?.
UPDATES
- The course material for this unit prepared by Melpomene Dixon for the English Teachers’ Association NSW is really excellent!
- I have since done a follow-up post.
I look forward to you moving onto Belonging Neil. My curriculum subject focus on the area of study, and we’ve had to design 2 units on it using prescribed texts (I did The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick) with supplementary texts. I’ve just had to take 5 texts apart and relate them back to the text as well as the concept of belonging. Hopefully your posts will give me some ideas for my own (neglected) blog in the future.
Like “Journeys”, “Belonging” is one of those expandable bag concepts into which almost anything can fit.
The First Australians on SBS instantly comes to mind, especially the recently screened Episode 3.
I will be getting around to it eventually. My timetable here tends to follow what my coachees are doing at the time.
I hope “Belonging” attracts as many “customers” as “Journeys” did.
BTW way way back I met Steven Herrick a few times; he used to come into the bookshop in Glebe where I worked in the mid 1980s.
wow thank you so much. Really useful stuff here
thanks for that! v useful
Your blog is wonderful! May I add you to my blogroll?
hey who was the painter for that man looking out to the scenery?