Frankenstein in Theory: A Critical Anatomy

Description

This collection provides new readings of Frankenstein from a myriad of established and burgeoning theoretical vantages including narrative theory, cognitive and affect theory, the new materialism, media theory, critical race theory, queer and gender studies, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and others. Demonstrating how the literary power of Frankenstein rests on its ability to theorize questions of mind, self, language, matter, and the socio-historic that also drive these critical approaches, this volume illustrates the ongoing intellectual richness found both in Mary Shelley's work and contemporary ways of thinking about it. Cover Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Frankenstein in Theory Orrin N. C. Wang 1 Last Words: Voice, Gesture, and the Remains of Frankenstein David L. Clark 2 When Jane Met Mary; or, Frankenstein’s Romantic Comedy Sonia Hofkosh 3 Frankenstein’s Embodied Imagination: Or, the Limits of Embodied Cognition Richard C. Sha 4 Non-Binary Frankenstein? Chris Washington 5 What’s Love Got to Do with It? Frankenstein and Monstrous Psychoanalysis Joel Faflak 6 The “very creature he creates”: Frankenstein in the Making of Moby-Dick Samuel Otter 7 Finitude, Frames, and the Plot of Frankenstein Yoon Sun Lee 8 Blackness and Anthropogenesis in Frankenstein Rei Terada 9 Mediating Monstrosity: Media, Information, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Andrew Burkett 10 “A daemon whom I had myself created”: Race, Frankenstein, and Monstering Patricia A. Matthew 11 The Smiles That One Is Owed: Justice, Justine, and Sympathy for a Wretch Erin M. Goss 12 The Utopias of Frankenstein Vivasvan Soni 13 Is That All There Is? No Regrets (after 1818) Jacques Khalip 14 Frankenstein in Practice (as Theory) Sara Guyer Notes on Contributors Index