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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Resources about Mary Shelley and her novel Frankenstein

Romanticism and Gothic Literature

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ROMANTICISM: IMAGINING FREEDOM: The rebellious artist, the attraction to the dark side, love and death, and the primacy of nature—all of these are themes that suffused the artistic and ideological revolution known as Romanticism. This program vividly conveys how new ways of thinking and seeing reshaped the humanities in the 18th and 19th centuries. The writings of Hölderlin, Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Byron, Wordsworth, and Keats, as well as the paintings of Turner and Goya and the music of Beethoven, are vibrantly presented. Scholars Susan Wolfson, professor of English at Princeton University; Rafael Argullol Murgados, director of the Institut Universitari de Cultura; Xavier Antich, professor of aesthetics at the Universitat de Girona; and David Reynolds, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discuss the characteristics of this influential movement and its impact on contemporary culture.

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THE CITY AND THE SOUL: As the Industrial Revolution promised more and more inexplicable wonders of the modern world, Gothic art and literature became both backward and forward looking. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warned of the dangers of how science could get out of control, while Sir Giles Gilbert Scott used Gothic architecture to memorialise Prince Albert as a medieval hero. Meanwhile, poets indulged in hallucinatory drugs to reach new Gothic heights. Where would it all end? A BBC Production.