 | Frankenstein: Encyclopedia II - Frankenstein - Name origins
Frankenstein - Name origins
Frankenstein - Frankenstein
Mary Shelley always maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision, but the origin of the name and what it means has been a source of speculation and critical analysis. Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means stone of the Franks. Frankenstein is also the former name of Ząbkowice Śląskie, a city in Silesia and the historical home of the Frankenstein family.
Radu Florescu, in his In Search of Frankenstein, argued that Mary and Percy Shelley stayed at Castle Frankenstein on their way to Switzerland, near Darmstadt along the Rhine, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel had experimented with human bodies, but that Mary suppressed mentioning this visit to maintain her public claim of originality. However, this theory is not without critics; Leonard Wolf calls it an "unconvincing...conspiracy theory" (Wolf, p.20).
Frankenstein - Victor
A likely interpretation of the name Victor derives from the poem Paradise Lost by John Milton, a great influence on Shelley (a quotation from Paradise Lost is on the opening page of Frankenstein and Shelley even allows the monster himself to read it). Milton frequently refers to God as "the Victor" in Paradise Lost, which Shelley obviously sees Victor as playing God by creating life. In addition, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; indeed, the monster says, after reading the epic poem, that he sympathizes with Satan's role in the story.
Frankenstein - Modern Prometheus
The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though some modern publishings of the work now drop the subtitle, mentioning it only in an introduction). Prometheus, in Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind, and Victor's work by creating man by new means obviously reflects that creative work. Prometheus was also the bringer of fire who took fire from heaven and gave it to man. Zeus then punished Prometheus by fixing him to a rock and each day an eagle came to devour his liver.
Prometheus' relation to the novel can be interpreted in a number of ways. For Mary Shelley on a personal level, Prometheus was not a hero but a devil, who she blamed for bringing fire to man and thereby seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat (fire brought cooking which brought hunting and killing) (Wolf, p. 20). For Romance era artists in general, Prometheus' gift to man compared with the two great utopian promises of the 18th century: the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, containing both great promise and potentially unknown horrors.
Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley would soon write Prometheus Unbound.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Name origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
