“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, July 5, 2018

Frankenstein

This is the bicentenary of the publication of Mary Shelley's first novel, whose significance for me personally is incredibly deep. It's a foundational text of modern culture, so I'm not alone. I think I've been trying to write about it in pretty much everything I've done since 1988, when I wrote my undergrad essay on it for David Norbrook at Magdalen College Oxford.

I'm so sad that I can't be at the bicentenary celebrations in Rome this week. I'd been invited but I can't make it.

1 comment:

uair01 said...

I suggested to my wife to spend the night in Frankenstein. This would fit our itinerary but my wife disagreed. She found the Pfaltz valleys too depressing (we drove through them once searching for a hotel). http://www.landgasthof-schlossberg.com/