Frankenstein: Technology
Frankenstein: Technology
In Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, written in the late nineteenth century by Mary Shelley, Shelley proposes that knowledge and its effects can be dangerous to individuals and all of humanity. Frankenstein was one of our first and still is one of our best cautionary tales about scientific research.. Shelley's novel is a metaphor of the problems technology is causing today. Learn from me. . . at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow (Shelley 101) The popular belief of how Frankenstein came to be written derives from
Shelley herself, who explains in an introduction to the novel that she , her husband Percy Shelly, and Lord Byron set themselves the task of creating ghost stories during a short vacation at a European villa. According to Shelley, the short story she conceived was predicated of the notion as the eighteenth became the nineteenth century that electricity could be a catalyst of life. in her introduction she recalls the talk about Erasmus Darwin, who had preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion," (Joseph vii). The extraordinary means forms the basis for Frankenstein. Many people also believe that a nightmare that Mary
Shelley had could also be partly responsible for the creation of the novel. At the time the novel was written, England was on the brink of leading the Industrial revolution in Europe. The experiments of Huntsman (crucible steel manufacture), Newcome (steam-powered pumps), and Cochrane (coal tar production) throughout the eighteenth century in England were decisive in the initial transformation of England into an industrialized country (Burke 137, 173,
195). The emerging age of technology appears to have found followers throughout the culture and to
In Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, written in the late nineteenth century by Mary Shelley, Shelley proposes that knowledge and its effects can be dangerous to individuals and all of humanity. Frankenstein was one of our first and still is one of our best cautionary tales about scientific research.. Shelley's novel is a metaphor of the problems technology is causing today. Learn from me. . . at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow (Shelley 101) The popular belief of how Frankenstein came to be written derives from
Shelley herself, who explains in an introduction to the novel that she , her husband Percy Shelly, and Lord Byron set themselves the task of creating ghost stories during a short vacation at a European villa. According to Shelley, the short story she conceived was predicated of the notion as the eighteenth became the nineteenth century that electricity could be a catalyst of life. in her introduction she recalls the talk about Erasmus Darwin, who had preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion," (Joseph vii). The extraordinary means forms the basis for Frankenstein. Many people also believe that a nightmare that Mary
Shelley had could also be partly responsible for the creation of the novel. At the time the novel was written, England was on the brink of leading the Industrial revolution in Europe. The experiments of Huntsman (crucible steel manufacture), Newcome (steam-powered pumps), and Cochrane (coal tar production) throughout the eighteenth century in England were decisive in the initial transformation of England into an industrialized country (Burke 137, 173,
195). The emerging age of technology appears to have found followers throughout the culture and to
Cited: Asimov, Isaac. "The Scientist as Villain." Asimov on Science Fiction. New York: Granada, 1983 Brooks, Peter. "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein." New Literary History (Spring 1978) 591-605 Fellman, Gordon. "The Truths of Frankenstein: Technologism and Images of Destruction." Psychohistory Review 19 (1991): 177231. Ungar, 1982. 23-43 Shelley, Mary Oxford: Oxford Up, 1969. New York: Bantam, 1963. 1-12. Tillyard, E.M.W. Myth and the English Mind. New York: Collier Books, 1961.