SHELLEY UNBOUND: FRANKENSTEIN’S TRUE CREATOR AND WHAT IT MEANS
July 14, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell
As most of you know, I rarely review books here, especially books of literary criticism, and especially one in which I was asked to contribute the Foreword, but this time I have to. The book in question is my friend of many years, and co-author Dr Scott D. de Hart’s Shelley Unbound: Discovering Frankenstein’s True Creator. Rarely is a book of literary criticism essential reading, but this one is for the simple reason that reading the novel as a “ghost story” by Mary Shelley – the standard line – completely misses the point of the book. The problem here is reviewing a book without giving away all its arguments and secrets.
Dr. de Hart peels back many layers of meaning in Shelley’s novel by a careful and meticulous comparison of the themes of Shelley’s life and poetry, his normal modus operandi – writing anonymously and even then employing an amanuensis to record his words, usually his wife Mary – his driving ambition to create a revolution of culture in Europe, based around the principles and doctrines of the Illuminati, his obsession both with science and alchemy (with its obscure texts)… one could go on, but I think the reader gets the point: the arguments are marshaled here, neatly summarized and artfully presented.
