News on the French Frankenstein

“The Frankenstein of the French Revolution: Nogaret’s Automaton Tale of 1790,” is now available in European Romantic Review, 20, 3 (2009): 381-411.
Long before Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in 1818, an author penned a story that resembles it on more than one account: François-Félix Nogaret, Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant (The Looking Glass of Actuality, or Beauty to the Highest Bidder, 1790). Nogaret’s story about an inventor named Frankenstein who builds an artificial man is an astounding precursor, especially since the Revolution and its attempt to make a “new man” have long focused interpretations of Shelley’s work. Both texts ask whether technological innovation will help or hinder human progress, and provide answers reflecting their differing historical and ideological contexts. What seemed possible in 1790 was later viewed with skepticism, including by Nogaret himself in subsequent editions of Le Miroir (1795, 1800). The tension between enthusiasm and disdain for the project of improving upon nature or remaking mankind, prefigured in the changes between the two editions of Nogaret’s novella, resonates profoundly in Frankenstein. By focusing on the history of eighteenth-century automatons, and a political interpretation of Nogaret’s two works, this article shines new light on issues of selfhood and community, and the boundaries between human and nonhuman, as they were perceived in the years 1790-1818.

– Julia Douthwaite, with Daniel Richter (M.A. University of Notre Dame, 2008)

New work in history and literature

Eds. Isabelle Brouard-Arends & Laurent Loty (Presses de l'Univ de Rennes 2, 2007)

 Includes: 

• Serge Bianchi, “Théâtre et engagement sur les scènes de l’An II” 
• Martial Poirson, « Intenables engagements dramatiques : Pamela entre révolution tranquille et scandale » 
• Anne-Rozenn Morel, « Modes d’engagement de l’utopie : Le ludique et le juridique »
• Philippe Corno, « Le Divorce sur la scène révolutionnaire : Un engagement politique ? »   
• Joël Castonguay-Bélanger, « Le Choix des sciences morales et politiques contre le désengagement des sciences expérimentales » 
• Julia Douthwaite, « La République a-t-elle besoin de savants ?  Le jugement des romans » 
• Huguette Krief, « Femmes dans l’agora révolutionnaire ou le deuil d’un engagement : Olympe de Gouges, Constance Pipelet, Germaine de Staël » 
• Yves Citton, « Gémir en silence : Puissance des engagements hétérogènes d’André Chénier »

See also Douthwaite, “In Search of a New Paradigm:  Recent Work in Revolutionary History, Literature, and Art,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, 2 (2004):  285-91.

French Frankenstein

What author wrote a parable about an inventor named Frankenstein and his life-size artificial man?  If you answered Mary Shelley, you are only half-right.  Long before Mary Shelley published her “Modern Prometheus” in 1818, a French author penned a story that resembles Shelley’s on more than one account.   Watch this weblog to learn more about the “French Frankenstein,” forthcoming in European Romantic Review in July 2009.