Berthold Schoene-Harwood

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's first novel, has established itself as one of modernity's most compelling and ominous myths. The story of the ambitious student of natural philosophy, who discovers the secret of life and constructs a living thing from inanimate materials, exudes an enduring fascination as an apt allegory of our own fraught relationship with the ever more complex machines we create. Skilfully conflating tradition and the individual imagination, Frankenstein poignantly captures the spirit of the early 1800s as an age of transition tragically divided between scientific progress and religious conservatism, revolutionary reform and conformist reaction.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"This Guide encapsulates the most important critical reactions to a novel that straddles the realms of both "high" literature and popular culture. The selections shed light on Frankenstein's historical and socio-political relevance, its innovative representations of science, gender, and identity, as well as its problematic cultural location between academic critique and creative production.

The Companion provides a thorough, up-to-date and critical evaluation of Welsh's work.

The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh

Daniel Lea

The essays collected in Posting the Male examine representations of masculinity in post-war and contemporary British literature, focussing on the works of writers as diverse as John Osborne, Joe Orton, James Kelman, Ian Rankin, Carol Ann Duffy, Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift and Jackie Kay. The collection seeks to capture the current historical moment of 'crisis', at which masculinity loses its universal transparency and becomes visible as a performative gender construct. Rather than denoting just one fixed, polarised point on a hierarchised axis of strictly segregated gender binaries, masculinity is revealed to oscillate within a virtually limitless spectrum of gender identities, characterised not by purity and self-containment but by difference and alterity. As the contributors demonstrate, rather than a gender 'in crisis' millennial manhood is a gender 'in transition'. Patriarchal strategies of man-making are gradually being replaced by less exclusionary patterns of self-identification inspired by feminism. Men have begun to recognise themselves as gendered beings and, as a result, masculinity has been set in motion.

Berthold Schoene-Harwood

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