Many Of The Main Ideas Behind The Literary Movement Of

Many of the main ideas behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be seen in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Although the dark motifs of her most remembered work, Frankenstein may not seem to conform to the brighter tones and subjects of the poems of her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their contemporaries and friends, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley was a contemporary of the romantic poets. Despite this apparent difference, Mary Shelley was deeply influenced by the romantics, and the reader of Frankenstein can certainly identify a number of characteristics of romanticism in this novel. Some critics have argued that Frankenstein is actually more sophisticated than the prose of other romantic writers, as†¦show more content†¦This is one of the ways in which Shelley, then, both embraces and simultaneously contests this particular romantic ideal. The moment which Shelley describes in Frankenstein is neither a moment recalled from her personal e xperience, such as a contemplative moment in nature, nor is the narrative voice her own, yet she is still portraying a particular quest to achieve the sublime. That quest, of course, is Victor Frankenstein’s effort to create a living being out of raw material in his laboratory. It is particularly curious that this quest occurs within the confines of Victor’s private, secluded laboratory, which is unlike the natural, pastoral environments of so many romantic texts. Yet, note the nature imagery in the following line, in which Victor expresses his feelings about the undertaking in one of the important quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley : â€Å"No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success, he tells the reader, recalling the heady project in his lab. â€Å"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through†¦. A new species would bless me as its creator and sou rce; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me (Shelley 51). Victor Frankenstein is aromatic character to the extent that he reflected the romantic writers’ emphasis on a new way of seeing. The romantics believed that it was individual andShow MoreRelated Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism598 Words   |  3 Pagescan be as scary as the word computer is to others. This essay is designed to help you become a great literary interpreter. 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