This essay has examined the role of science in the three classic horror stories Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Dracula. The argument stated that the role of science in these works is changeable and constitutes both a friend and an enemy, depending on the protagonists’ motives. Viktor Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll explore science selfishly and without forethought, creating fear of uncontrollable speculation as well as unpredictable degeneration. However, the good aspects of science are later redeemed when Van Helsing and Dr Seward add human and religious values. In order to show the argument to be true, the motives for turning to science, the use of science and the results have been scrutinized. In the three chapters, the protagonists’ relation to and exploration of science have been examined. Viktor Frankenstein’s scientific obsession results in an isolated, mad scientist and a tormented creature, hungry for revenge. The violent and hateful Mr Hyde, a symbol of primitive backlash, is the outcome of Dr Jekyll’s scientific venture. Conversely, Van Helsing’s and Dr Seward’s humanistic use of scientific progress creates shelter and hope. The distinguishing element in these outcomes is morality, carrying with it reflective forethought and compassion.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Quel est le lien entre de jeunes et indomptables vampires de la Nouvelle-Orléans, une créature frankensteinienne avec des ciseaux à la place des mains, Alice combattant la Reine Rouge dans un Wonderland effroyable et un ange déchu nommé Cain, version japonaise ? Ténèbres, rébellion et jeunesse semblent se rejoindre dans le même filon. L'objectif de cette thèse de littérature comparée n'est pas simplement de rappeler que les manifestations de la sous-culture Goth est toujours d'actualité mais aussi démontrer le caractère trans-médiatique et transculturel de ce que nous appelons la culture des ténèbres, dans quatre médias différents. Divisé en quatre grands chapitres, ce travail analyse l'importance du premier « vampire moderne », Dracula de Bram Stoker, dans l'émergence de la figure de l'outcast vampirique dans The Vampire Lestat de Anne Rice et Lost Souls de Poppy Z Brite. Le second chapitre étudie la créature frankensteinienne dans le film de Tim Burton, Edward Scissorhands, lequel a su imposer sa propre conception tout en étant sensiblement lié à l'œuvre de Mary Shelley. Le troisième se consacre à l'analyse de la ré-imagination personnelle d'Alice in Wonderland par le concepteur American McGee dans les jeux vidéos American McGee's Alice et Alice Madness Returns. Enfin, nous proposons une étude de la série de manga Goth Cain écrit par Yuki Kaori dans un dernier chapitre. / What is the link between young wild vampires in New Orleans, a frankensteinian creature with scissors for hands, Alice fighting the Red Queen in a twisted Wonderland and a japanese version of a fallen angel named Cain ? Darkness, rebellion and youth seem to converge in the same stream. The purpose of this thesis is not only to recall that Goth subculture is still fashionable but also to discuss on the dark culture transmedia and transculturalism in four different medias. Divided in four chapters, this study analyses the importance of the first « modern » vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula's in the coming-up of the vampire outcast in Anne Rice's Vampire Lestat and Poppy Z Brite's Lost Souls. The second chapter focuses on the creature in Tim Burton's movie Edward Scissorhands which presents an original conception while dealing with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at the same time. The third chapter analyses American McGee's personal vision of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland in the video games American McGee's Alice and Alice Madness Returns. The last chapter explores Yuki Kaori's Cain Goth manga series.

This thesis concerns the themes of godhood and creation in modern, secular works. Using literary analysis, the thesis examines how the creation myth and the relationship between creator and creation is written in David Almond’s novel Clay and the video game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, in comparison with how the same relationship is presented in Frankenstein and Paradise Lost. The thesis focuses on how the different works portray the themes of god, creation, original sin, and atonement, where the portrayals differ and where are the same. It ends with a discussion on how modern, secular stories using these themes manage to separate themselves from their religious origins while still remaining true to their inspirations. / Denna uppsats behandlar ämnena gudomlighet och skapelse i moderna, sekulära verk. Genom att använda litterär analys undersöker uppsatsen hur skapelseberättelsen och förhållandet mellan skapare och skapelse skildras i David Almonds roman Clay och datorspelet Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs i jämförelse med hur samma förhållande presenteras i Frankenstein och Paradise Lost. Uppsatsen fokuserar på hur de olika verken skildrar temana gud, skapelsen, syndafallet och försoningen, samt skillnader och likheter i skildringarna. Den avslutas med en diskussion om hur moderna, sekulära berättelsen som använder dessa teman separerar sig från sitt religiösa ursprung men ändå förblir trogna sina inspirationer.

Embedded within various works of Eighteenth-Century literature lie themes regarding how the protagonists of these stories pursue their own versions of happiness. This thesis examines how characters from a wide variety of Eighteenth-Century novels engage with their surroundings, often resisting the dominant social structures of the time, to fashion more fulfilling lives for themselves. From Robinson Crusoe to Elizabeth Bennet to Frankenstein's monster, these characters come from a wide variety of backgrounds but all reveal several unifying themes. They seek out personal connections rather that striving to fulfill antiquated social expectations and they focus on their own agency, rather than circumstances out of their control. Their respective journeys are often fraught with peril, but each one is a journey worth embarking on.

Thesis abstract: Despite the fact that some critics view the period of the true Gothic as ending in the year 1820, others consider it to be a genre, as well as an aesthetic, which can still be perceived across various different cultural aspects to this day. Possibly the best way to approach the Gothic within the realm of literature is to observe several key examples of the Gothic topos, which was grounded in the original Gothic pieces of the eighteenth century. During the course of the nineteenth century, a historical period which from the cultural point of view appears almost inherently Gothic, British Gothic writing has undergone considerable changes and development, maintaining several of the key Gothic features, namely those of setting, isolation, and character types, modifying them in the process. Through this, it can be observed to what extent the aspects remain, and just how far-reaching their transformation was within the six exemplary works - Frankenstein, The Vampyre, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Carmilla, and Dracula. Another important aspect overlaying the selected works is that of monstrosity - a rather physical interpretation of the inner monstrosities of humans, or indeed an entire culture. The literary works, no matter how different at first glance they may appear to be, all utilize typical...

Partant du principe qu'une machine ne sait pas qu'elle est une machine et du présupposé selon lequel un robot n'a pas de conscience, ce travail étudie le parallèle entre la fabrication des créatures de roman et la fabrication des machines. Parmi ces figures, Madame Bovary est un archétype. Comme tout autre machine, Emma Bovary ne sait pas qu'elle en est une. Emma est une machine à texte, elle est faite de livres. Pourtant, elle ne peut pas avoir lu Madame Bovary. Parce qu'Emma n'est pas consciente qu’elle est l'appareil de Flaubert, nous l'avons rapproché des fonctionnements et des disfonctionnements du Monstre de Frankenstein, encore écervelé avant l'épiphanie des livres qu'il découvre au creux d'un chemin. Après avoir défini les enjeux stratégiques de ses lectures, Emma est présentée comme une machine homéostatique, d'une part du point de vue de la thermodynamique, et d'autre part, du point de vue de l'entropie, une résultante du bovarysme, causée par les distorsions entre la vie et la lecture. Dans un premier temps Emma perçoit, puis ressent, par les feedbacks de ses lectures. Elle se transforme alors en une mécanique à émotions, gouvernée par son bovarysme. Ce sentiment renvoie à toutes ses perceptions et ses appétits. Par ses désirs, Emma démontre une capacité à comparer et à se projeter, formulant les prémices d'une conscience autobiographique. De la même manière qu'il représente l'inconscient social à partir d'automates déambulatoires, tels la figure du pied-bot ou de l'aveugle, Flaubert réussit à induire une idée de conscience dans sa créature machine / According to the fact that a machine does not know that it is a machine, and to the supposition that a robot has no conscience, this work explores parallels between the creation of the characters of a novel and the fabrication of machines. Among these figures, Madame Bovary is an archetype. Like any other machine, Emma Bovary does not know that she is one. Emma is machine created from text. She is made from the stuff of books. However, she could not have read the book Madame Bovary. Because Emma is not aware that she is a device of Flaubert, there are some similarities between her and the functions and malfunctions of the Monster of Frankenstein that didn't have a conscience until the moment of epiphany with the books he discovered in the woods. After the definition of the strategic challenges of her readings, Emma is presented as a homeostatic machine, first from the viewpoint of thermodynamics, and secondly from the viewpoint of entropy, a result of the bovarysme caused by distortions between life and reading. Emma's perceptions and feelings depend of the feedback of her readings. She becomes an emotional device, governed by her bovarysme. This feeling is present in all her perceptions and her appetites. Through her desires, Emma demonstrates an ability to compare and project herself, formulating the beginnings of an autobiographical conscience. In the same way as he represents social unconsciousness with ambulatory automatons such as the figure of the club-footed Hippolyte or the blind man, Flaubert is able to induce an idea of consciousness in his machine-creature

This narrative inquiry documents the inaugural Performance at the Center summer institute, a professional development program in which teachers worked alongside students to generate an original multimodal performance piece inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Specifically, the study examines text-inspired creation: how readers identify and then create out of the gaps and spaces in a given text through remix and performance. This researcher employs qualitative methods to address the following questions: (1) How do Performance at the Center facilitators set up the conditions for text-inspired creation? (2) How do teacher and student players describe what effect, if any, Performance at the Center has on their reading of Frankenstein? and (3) How do select teacher players describe what effect, if any, Performance at the Center has had on their design and implementation of curriculum? Examining her data through the lens of “the gift” (Marcel Mauss and Lewis Hyde), this researcher finds that facilitators set up the conditions for text-inspired creation by stepping into the role of muse—offering both tangible and intangible “gifts” to prompt production. Teachers and students describe the ways in which Performance at the Center invites sensory entry into Shelley’s text, enabling readers to compose meanings potentially inaccessible through words alone. Select teachers describe the ways in which Performance at the Center catalyzes a reconceptualization of what it means to teach literature, underscoring as it does the profound distinction between dissecting a text and experiencing a text. This investigation suggests that positioning the study of literature within a gift culture—receiving literature as a living gift to be passed on through student text-inspired creation—has the potential revitalize texts, teachers and the classroom itself.

Due to their inclusion of characters or objects that are the result of scientific investigation or subject to scientific scrutiny, Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and “The Colour Out of Space” are works that may be classified as science fiction. However, despite these narratives’ engagement with scientific practice, at crucial moments when scientific description would be expected, it is prominently absent. This report investigates the effects of these absences within the narratives and suggests that such absences do not appear due to the author’s unfamiliarity with the science of her or his era, but rather serve the positive purpose of creating the effect of the sublime through horror, which is most effective when the reader is forced to confront the unknown or unreadable. To corroborate this hypothesis, this report also examines the treatment of certain hybrids within the three stories and the way that the terror they inspire seems to rely on the ways in which they mingle the known with the unknown and resist coherent description. Overall, this report seeks to illuminate the complex interaction of the known and the not yet known that has enabled a fruitful interaction between science fiction and horror as genres since the inception of science fiction as a definable genre. / text

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prelude to the Anatomy Act of 1832, which indulged the anatomists’ scientific ambition, granting a legitimate and sufficient source of cadavers to dissect legally. When read in concert with the history of anatomy and the historical record of body snatching, including case law and anatomy legislation, Frankenstein exemplifies the issues in medico-legal history at the turn of the nineteenth century, for Victor Frankenstein and the Creature’s stories are set amid the context of anatomical study, grave-robbery, crime, punishment and the illicit relationship between medicine and murder. This thesis accordingly addresses the medico-legal history of anatomy, the anatomist’s ambition and complex inhumanity, and the mingled identity of the anatomical subject as illegitimate and criminal. This analysis demonstrates that Frankenstein sheds light upon the anatomist’s ambition, the identity of the human cadaver, and the bioethical consequences of meddling with nature.