A couple years later Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Claire Clairemont, Lord Byron, and Byron’s doctor were all staying in Geneva. Various sources mention how the weather was unrelentingly terrible, which is why it is often referred to as the year without summer, so they had little to nothing to do all day except sit around and read creepy German ghost stories. So naturally enough, being a circle of creative writers, a novel-writing contest ensued. The doctor wrote a story that would later be a huge influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Mary Shelley, still a teenager wrote Frankenstein.
In romanticism, artists often reinterpreted myths. These reinterpretations were often subjective and not value- free. Myths are narratives of a society
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How already mentioned in point 4.2 Characteristics, Motifs and Themes, this was a time where people really believed they someday might be able to reanimate the dead and were highly interested in everything that was unknown to Christianity (Shelley, p.v-vii). That night she went to bed and had a “terrible waking dream”.
“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be.”
Anyway, that’s Mary Shelley’s story of the creation of