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)

Édition de fictions utopiques et juridiques, par Laurent Loty

Rétif de la Bretonne, l'homme volant

Ces publications, qui relient des écrits (articles et histoires fictives d’utopie) par des étudiants en lettres des USA et de France, s’inscrivent dans le programme international « Alterréalisme », d’incitation à la rédaction et à la diffusion de fictions utopiques et juridiques. Ce programme a obtenu l’aide du Nanovic Institute for European Studies de l’University of Notre Dame (Indiana), de Brandeis University (Massachussets), et de l’Unité de Formation et de Recherche Arts-Lettres-Communication de l’Université Rennes 2 (France)

- Qui a dit que l’utopie était une chimère ?, recueil d’utopies édité par Laurent Loty, Rennes, Service de la Reprographie de l’Université Rennes 2, 2002, 72 pp.;  2^e série, 2004, 92 pp.;   3^e série, 2005, 140 pp.

- Échos d’Outre-Atlantique, recueil d’utopies, 4^e série, avant-propos de Julia Douthwaite, University of Notre Dame (Indiana), USA,  2005, 42 pp.

- Nouvelles d’Ailleurs, 5^e recueil d’utopies, recueil édité par Anne-Rozenn Morel, mai 2005, Université de Haute-Alsace [et réédité par Rennes 2, 2005], 54 pp.

- Who says Utopia is a Dream ? Towards an alterrealism, 6th series, édited by Mary B. Campbell, Brandeis University, Cambridge (Massachussets) in collaboration with the Université Rennes 2, 2006, 138 pp.

- L’Utopie à la recherche du bonheur. Pour un alterréalisme, recueil d’utopies, 7^e série, introduction par Marie-Françoise Bosquet, Editions Art et Culture de l’Université de la Réunion, 2008, 48 pp.

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.