Pushing Boundaries: Baconian Thread in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
In Bacon’s Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, he reveals that the experimentation with the natural world is a violent process in which the outcomes are bound up with that violence. In this paper I discuss the ontological effects that are darkened by this vexation as they are portrayed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and in the British National Theatre’s production Frankenstein, where this violent process becomes a visceral trauma. I show that through Bacon’s process of natural vexation the existence of the creature becomes the embodiment of scientific torture. Similarly, I explore how Victor Frankenstein mimics Bacon as his state of existence shifts from student to master whose knowledge allows him to transform nature. It is important that these connections are made because Shelley and Bacon provide complimentary perspectives of the ontological outcomes that arise when nature is faced with forceful experimentation as seen through these literature and thematic representations.
Copyright and Licensing of My Content
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Location
B150 JFSB
Start Date
19-3-2015 11:30 AM
End Date
19-3-2015 1:00 PM
Pushing Boundaries: Baconian Thread in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
B150 JFSB
In Bacon’s Of the Wisdom of the Ancients, he reveals that the experimentation with the natural world is a violent process in which the outcomes are bound up with that violence. In this paper I discuss the ontological effects that are darkened by this vexation as they are portrayed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and in the British National Theatre’s production Frankenstein, where this violent process becomes a visceral trauma. I show that through Bacon’s process of natural vexation the existence of the creature becomes the embodiment of scientific torture. Similarly, I explore how Victor Frankenstein mimics Bacon as his state of existence shifts from student to master whose knowledge allows him to transform nature. It is important that these connections are made because Shelley and Bacon provide complimentary perspectives of the ontological outcomes that arise when nature is faced with forceful experimentation as seen through these literature and thematic representations.