Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing - Book Report/Review Example

?Book review –In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. The book “In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing” by Chris Baldick is an application of structuralist theory to literary criticism and historical research, and includes an extensive review of the symbolic content of Victorian literature as it relates to the social developments of the era. Baldick shows the manner in which literary works such as Mary Percy Shelley’s “Frankenstein” express the mythological aspects of human communication as they are patterned on the deeper structures of mind. Baldick relates the political aspect of this literature to Structuralism, while the psychological aspects are related to Freudian interpretation of symbols and development of culture, influenced by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. The result is a detailed re-contextualization of Romantic literature within the framework of historical interpretation, making “In Frankenstein’s Shadow” an excellent reference source for further reading on the topic by students of history, English literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and mythology. Baldick’s thesis in the book “In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing” can be summarized in the passage where he writes: “Books themselves behave monstrously towards their creators, running loose from authorial intention and turning to mock their begetters by displaying a vitality of their own. 'Unluckily', writes Freud, ‘an author’s creative power does not always obey his will: the work proceeds as it can, and often presents itself to the author as something independent or even alien’1 There is a sense in which all writing must do this, but with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the process goes much further. This novel manages to achieve a double feat of self-referentiality, both its composition and its subsequent cultural status miming the central moments of its own story. Like the monster it contains, the novel is assembled from dead fragments to make a living whole, and as a published work, it escapes Mary Shelley’s textual frame and acquires its independent life outside it, as a myth.” (30) Baldick shows how the “alien” relates to the shadow aspects of society through the creation of monsters in Victorian literature. He invokes Freud and Levi-Strauss in building the structuralist interpretation of the milieu, using a psychological method of interpretation to apply to the symbols of the literature. The work is a good source for students in the field to review as a model of academic research and literary criticism. Historians will find depth in the ideas presented as they relate to primary source material, cross-referenced for accuracy and interpreted through the lens of the prominent ideologies of the time. Post-modernists will enjoy the de-constructive elements of the critique, and see it as an inspiration for further research in literary criticism. In this regard, Baldick succeeds in producing a detailed work of scholarship that analyzes the relation of cultural symbols to myth, and it is valuable even in the political context of understanding how the “alien” and “other” can be portrayed as monstrous in mass-media. As the title suggests, the author is searching for the “Shadow” in Victorian literature as a psychological archetype. While this suggests affinity with the research of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, who chart the appearance of psychological archetypes across the mytho-poetic expression of cultures in numerous works, such as Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and “The Masks of God” series, Baldick follows the structuralist logic of Levi-Strauss with an emphasis on the political and social aspects of interpretation, proceeding from the philosophical establishment of “Frankenstein” as an expression of mythology in modernism to a discussion on the influence this story had over other writers. He reviews the work of Conrad and Melville in relation to the repetition of the archetype of the “Monster” in popular culture, referencing the novels “The Heart of Darkness” and “Moby Dick” as examples of the Shadow principle. The mytho-poetic expression of the Shadow through Victorian writers was related to the political fears of the era—technology, economic violence, revolutionary ideologies and change that swept through Western Europe, altering Europe’s political and social landscape from medieval patterns of behavior and thought, yet these were projected outward into the symbols of nature and foreign cultures in the mythological aspects of the literature. This can be seen in the political aspects of Conrad’s novels relating to the “other” of imperialism and the aspects of self-creation achieved through defining the “alien” and primitive, as well as in “Moby Dick,” where the natural symbol of omnipotence resisting the mastery of Victorian technology was symbolized in the white whale. These provide examples of what Baldick means when he discusses reading the characteristics of a society through its shadow, highlighting the psychological manner in which the construction of the “other” defines the self and the milieu. Baldick locates the shadow by relating Victorian literature to structuralist theory, building an overall theory of the mytho-poetic aspects of symbolic communication and cultural expression. In the process, Baldick successfully highlights the historical interrelation of ideas and cultural influences within the literary community as being expressive of larger social movements. In discussing the authors of the era and their major works of literature, a valuable introduction is provided to the field with research that is extensive and detailed, and has considerable appeal for advanced students. The accuracy of the sources in the work is cross-referenced by an extensive bibliography that includes primary sources with related works of criticism and interpretation. The construction of the interrelation between the ideologies of the Victorian era will be valuable to historians who seek to pair primary sources with expressions in popular literature. That these works of Victorian literature, exemplified by “Frankenstein,” “Moby Dick,” “Heart of Darkness” and other novels, had a great influence in building the symbolic identity of the era popularly is the reason that Baldick emphasizes the mythological aspects of this form of cultural communication in the book “In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing.” Readers should finish the book with an understanding of some of the basics of Structuralism as it relates to literary criticism through Levi-Strauss, Freud, and Jung. The shadow is related to the social construction of the “other” in society, and as such completes the conscious aspects of cultural self-expression accepted positively by the mainstream of a culture through recognition of the unconscious aspects of archetypes as they are created in “the alien” and “the monster” in the symbolic positioning of literature. That popular fiction can arise as a mythological construct in the social identity of an era is seen in other historical milieus within the structuralist interpretive framework, but the unique social and cultural fears of the Victorian era and their continued tradition as the basis of modern culture are shown clearly by Baldwick as related to the psychological archetype of the shadow in myth. Read More