Skip to main content

Search from vocabulary

Content language

Concept information

Preferred term

Frankenstein  

Definition

  • On June 16, 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley created one of the enduring myths of modern civilization: the narrative of the scientist who single-handedly creates a new species, a humanoid form that need not die. In her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), Victor Frankenstein robs both cemeteries and slaughterhouses in order to suture together a creature composed of dead animal and human body parts, a creature he then animates with the “spark of life.” In doing so, he claims he has renewed life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. [Source: Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience; Frankenstein]

Belongs to group

URI

https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/Frankenstein

Download this concept: