Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. xvi, 181 pages; 23 cm

Summary

1. In the period between 1815 and 1820, Mary Shelley wrote her most famous novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, as well as its companion piece, Mathilda, a tragic incest narrative that was confiscated by her father, William Godwin, and left unpublished until 1959. She also gave birth to four - and lost three - children. In this hybrid text, Rachel Feder interprets Frankenstein and Mathilda within a series of provocative frameworks including Shelley's experiences of motherhood and maternal loss, twentieth-century feminists' interests in and attachments to Mary Shelley, and the critic?s own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Harvester of Hearts explores how Mary Shelley's exchanges with her children - in utero, in birth, in life, and in death - infuse her literary creations. Drawing on the archives of feminist scholarship, Feder theorizes "elective affinities," a term she borrows from Goethe to interrogate how the personal attachments of literary critics shape our sense of literary history. Feder blurs the distinctions between intellectual, bodily, literary, and personal history, reanimating the classical feminist discourse on Frankenstein by stepping into the frame. The result - at once an experimental book of literary criticism, a performative foray into feminist praxis, and a deeply personal lyric essay - not only locates Mary Shelley's monsters within the folds of maternal identity but also illuminates the connections between the literary and the quotidian.

Subject

1. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 > Criticism and interpretation
2. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851
3. Frankenstein (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft)
4. 1800-1899
5. English fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
6. Women and literature > England > History > 19th century
7. Motherhood and the arts
8. English fiction
9. Women and literature
10. England

Genre/Form

1. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
2. History.

Contents

1. Forgetting -- Channel -- Erasure -- Clarity -- Elective affinities -- Self -- Mouth -- Rest -- Identity -- Infant vows -- Imagination -- Lost -- Unearthly -- Under the sign -- Catastrophe -- Created -- Mix -- Broken -- Taken -- Will -- Brevity -- Clarity -- Fox's heart -- Lost -- Afterbirth -- The madre.

Call number

1. JFE 19-3351

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Author

1. Feder, Rachel, author.

Title

1. Harvester of hearts : motherhood under the sign of Frankenstein / Rachel Feder.

Publisher

1. Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2018.

Copyright date

1. ©2018

Type of content

1. text

Type of medium

1. unmediated

Type of carrier

1. volume

Bibliography

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological term

1. 1800-1899

LCCN

1. 2018019341

ISBN

1. 9780810137523 (paperback alkaline paper)
2. 0810137526 (paperback alkaline paper)
3. 9780810137530 (hardcover alkaline paper)
4. 0810137534 (hardcover alkaline paper)
5. 9780810137547 (electronic book)

Research call number

1. JFE 19-3351