This course explores the tumultuous marriage and literary partnership of two incredibly influential Romantic authors, Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These writers pioneered several genres –Gothic horror and science fiction in Mary’s Frankenstein (1818), and political poems and visionary lyrics in Percy’s Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, Prometheus Unbound and The Mask of Anarchy. (1816-1820). We will ask why Frankenstein has become a feminist classic, and how the novel opened up the darker side of the Shelley’s marriage. We will also consider a fascinating modern update of Mary’s masterpiece, Poor Things (2023), with Emma Stone as a heroine based on Shelley’s Creature. This wildly imaginative film is based on both Mary’s astonishingly original first novel and Percy’s revolutionary ideas and poems.
((Jon Klancher - Tuesday - CMU))
