A Study Of Polyphony In Frankenstein

Mary Shelley has eventually emerged from her famous husband Percy Bysshe Shelley's shadow as an important figure in English Romantic literature.Mary Shelley is a woman of versatility,but to most people,she is known primarily for her "hideous progeny"—Frankenstein,which contributes to establishing her position in British literature and even in the world literature.Frankenstein is hailed as "the seminal work for the genre of science fiction"(E.W.Sustein) and "possibly the most important minor novels in English"(George Levine).Up till now,critics have probed this novel from almost every possible angle and perspective.These studies have deepened people's understanding of it and broadened their vision. However,this thesis attempts to throw a new light on the understanding of Frankenstein by exploring it as a polyphonic novel.This thesis consists of three chapters,along with the introduction and conclusion.The introduction mainly presents the critical response to Frankenstein and a literature review and then points out the inadequacy of previous perspectives of the diverse researches,which is followed by a brief introduction of Bakhtin's polyphonic theory and then the proposition of the gist of this thesis.The first chapter discusses the "great dialogue" in Frankenstein.It is composed of four parts.The first part is an introduction of the definition of "great dialogue" defined by the Bakhtin school.The following three parts analyze in great details the dialogue between the author and the narrators,between the narrators and between the author and the readers respectively.The novel as a whole is a "great dialogue."The second chapter analyzes the "micro-dialogue" in Frankenstein. It is made of four parts.The first part is a summary of the "micro-dialogue" defined by the Bakhtin school.The next three parts discuss respectively the "micro-dialogue" which finds full expression in the three male narrators'—Frankenstein's,the Monster's and Walton's—discourses.The discourses of these narrators are double-voiced,revealing the conflicts of two or more voices or consciousnesses debating or contending with each other within one single mind.The third chapter explores the intertextual dialogue in Frankentein. It consists of five parts.The first part presents an introduction of intertext—another way expressing heteroglossia—the result of voices within voices.The following four parts discuss the intertextual dialogue of the novel by means of parodying the story of Paradise Lost,alluding to the story of the Sorrows of Werther,using the Prometheus prototype,and quotation.The novel can be said to be a mosaic of different literary works.This thesis arrives at a conclusion that Frankenstein is polyphonic novel full of multiple dialogues and voices,which contributes to the novel's astonishing ambivalence,uncertainty and unfinalizability, producing an effect of "heteroglossia" and endowing the novel with strong resilience and tension.