{"id":1942,"date":"2018-01-31T12:20:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T12:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2018-01-31T12:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T12:26:03","slug":"1942","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1942","title":{"rendered":"Report from ‘Romantic Novels 1818’ – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a report by Merrilees Roberts\u00a0from the first ‘Romantic Novels 1818<\/a>‘ seminar. This series is sponsored by BARS and seminars are held at the University of Greenwich.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

BARS also provides bursaries to support postgraduates and early career researchers who wish to attend. You can find more information on the application process and see details of upcoming seminars in the series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A Discussion of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein <\/em>(1818) with Dr James Grande<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romantic Novels 1818 Seminar January 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

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James Grande delivered a fascinating paper on Frankenstein<\/em> intended to spark ideas about how to capture the neglected \u20181818\u2019 context of the novel\u2019s first edition, which comprised only 500 copies sold mostly to circulating libraries. Grande took James Chandler\u2019s England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism<\/em> as an inspiration for thinking through a microhistory of 1818 which would capture the novel\u2019s historical – rather than literary – context. Resisting the critical orthodoxy of readings focused on biographical and \u2018family romance\u2019 narratives about the Shelley-Godwin family, Grande suggested possible ways of thinking through Frankenstein<\/em>\u2019s reception in 1818. These included setting the dedication to Godwin in the context of the repressive measures enforced by a government wishing to quash continuing debates fostered by 1790s radicalism, and research which shows that in this decade the fiction market was actually dominated by female authorship. This perhaps throws an interesting light on Percy Shelley\u2019s support of and collaboration in the project. Another important consideration was the articles appearing in the same periodicals containing reviews of\u00a0Frankenstein – <\/em>those\u00a0which express anxiety about the melting of the polar ice-caps, and which provide an unwittingly significant frame narrative to the novel.<\/p>\n

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University of Greenwich campus<\/p><\/div>\n

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Particularly interesting to me was the idea that the death of Princess Charlotte in November 1817 provides a more compelling analogue for the novel\u2019s implicit preoccupation with the dangers of childbirth than Mary Wollstonecraft\u2019s death in 1797. The idea that the changes in the weather throughout Europe following the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, which created the so-called \u2018year without a summer\u2019 in 1816, was in some sense a causal <\/em>factor of both the composition of Frankenstein <\/em>and the continuing apocalyptic mood of this post-revolutionary period also offers an interesting point of relation to the burgeoning scholarly interest in eco-criticism and philosophies of matter.<\/p>\n

– Merrilees Roberts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a report by Merrilees Roberts\u00a0from the first ‘Romantic Novels 1818‘ seminar. This series is sponsored by BARS and seminars are held at the University of Greenwich.\u00a0 BARS also… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[16,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1950,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}