Themes for the Meme

The “themes” section of the database, discussed under the Frankenstein Meme Project drop down menu, was developed to enable our crowd source researchers/readers to have a set of thematic elements to link Frankenstein-influenced stories across time. After completing research on a particular work and completing the publication history part of the template and naming any characters borrowed from Shelley’s work or life, our readers had to determine which of our nine themes might apply. The number was deliberately kept low so that our readers would not be overwhelmed. These nine “umbrella” themes became mini-essays on aspects of the novel, so I break them out here for individual consideration by interested users of the website and its database.

Here are the short or brief definitions, linked to the mini-essay on each topic:

A Brief List of Nine Key THEMES for Discussing  Frankenstein’s influence, with short definitions:

ANDROID—human-made artificial “humans”; augmented, transformed human bodies; vivisection; cyborgs and  robots, and more; questioning “What is Human?”

BYRONIC HERO—willful, superior, misanthropic, aristocratic antihero: Victor is an exemplar; also includes the first literary vampires, which arose out of the same ghost story contest that inspired Frankenstein.

POSTHUMAN and LAST MAN—apocalypse/rebirth; sublime turn of history; singularity; forced evolution; transhuman; eco-/anthropocene monsters, including human/animal hybrids; questioning “Am I Human?”

MAD SCIENTISTS/MONSTERS—iconic pulp creator who loses control of experiment; monster destroys creator; confusion of “Frankenstein” as naming creator and monster; educating mad scientists.

QUEER FRANKENSTEIN—gender questions and the monstrous; queer desire and the pitiable outcast figure, especially in representations between men/male monsters; men giving birth; empathy with abjection.

RACE/POLITICS—intersection/conflation of race, politics, or imperialism with monsters; fear of class; fear of the mob; Black Frankenstein: American black bodies conflated with the Creature.

RETRO SF—celebrating Frankenstein as sf’s origin; bringing life to antique automata or vivisected bodies, and other out of control experiments by natural philosophers; Steampunk, Edisonades, Victoriana; Gaslamp sf.

SYMPATHETIC MONSTER—the modern monster we identify with as well as fear; the monster inside us; we are the monster; the Jungian shadow; the pitiable, terrible outcast; sympathy with abjection; educating monsters.

WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS—Shelley as an origin for the feminist transformation of sf, with a parallel rise in her academic reputation; intersection/conflation of writing/women/monsters.

Administrative Notes: Dr. David Sandner