Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is today remembered as the progenitor of the science fiction genre, the first major literary work to link a long history of fictional narratives concerning the origins of life notably drawing itself from the stories of Prometheus and Miltons Paradise Lost to the scientific rationalism of the enlightenment. Of the science fiction stories that would follow, Philip K. Dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? perhaps remains one of the closest to Shelleys novel in terms of its concerns and themes. Dicks text is concerned with the thematic of the creation of human simulacra, but its interests are more involved with the ethical implications of technological advancement on society than the fantastic technologies he writes of. Given these similarities, notions of nature and the environment might seem ancillary to an analysis of these texts. These issues, however, are precisely what my thesis claims to be central to a proper understanding of Dicks and Shelleys novels.
The aesthetic categories of the beautiful, and most importantly the sublime, are essential to this research. Both classic works of aesthetic theory namely Burke and Kant as well as mobilizations of the sublime that account for contemporary cultural trends such as those of Fredric Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard are utilized so as to track an epistemological shift in both conceptions of the sublime, as well as the relationship between humanity and its environment. This shift, from viewing the natural world as a space wherein humans immanently dwell, to a positivist notion of nature as resources for human manipulation documented in Caroline Merchants The Death of Nature can be linked to what Leo Marx describes as the movement from a natural to a technological sublime, and is both chronicled and critiqued in Frankenstein. Dicks Androids picks up where Shelleys novel leaves off, carrying an absolute ideological positivism to one possible conclusion, environmental and social crisis, inaugurating, interestingly, a return to a bizarre, and textually ironic spiritualism in the form of the religion Mercerism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-08292011-115108 |
| Date | 08 September 2011 |
| Creators | Schneeberger, Aaron Francis |
| Contributors | Deborah Slicer, Kathleen Kane, Louise Economides |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-08292011-115108/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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