Abstract

Abstract:

This essay focuses on the repeated idea, what Romantic-era philosophers called a “ruling passion” and we might call ruminative obsession, in Mary Shelley’s seminal text. While scholars have contributed valuable psychoanalytic readings of Victor Frankenstein’s various obsessions, these readings do not square with the ways the Romantics conceived of the mind-brain. Therefore, this paper examines Shelley’s descriptions of Victor and, to a lesser degree, Walton, alongside Romantic-era religious and medical texts. In doing so, I argue that Frankenstein reflects upon and attempts to understand the emerging psychological concept of obsession by examining the implications of David Hartley’s theory of associationism, whether in the context of religious or scholarly “enthusiasm.”

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