The Narrator’s Identity and the Pursuit of Trespassing Boundaries in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

• Authors: Filutowska, Katarzyna

Abstracts

EN

The article focuses on the problem of the narrator’s and the author’s identity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. According to Charles Taylor’s philosophy of subjectivity in order to have an identity we have to know what kind of good we would like to fulfil in our life. Such an orientation to the good (an orientation in moral space) and an endeavour after realizing this main value defines us as ourselves. In the paper it is argued that the pursuit of trespassing boundaries is constitutive to the narrator’s identity in the novel as it is such kind of an aim without which they could not have been themselves. It is also the key to the author’s identity. Through the medium of the stories of her male story-tellers she confronts her own demons, explores the territories of the subconscious beyond the bounds of understanding and depicts her struggle with the limitations she overcame as a woman in a patriarchal society and as a person who invented a new literary genre – science-fiction literature.

Keywords

EN

identity; narrator; trespassing of boundaries; Frankenstein; Mary Shelley

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Analyses/Rereadings/Theories: A Journal Devoted to Literature, Film and Theatre
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2016

Contributors

author

Filutowska, Katarzyna

other

University of Warsaw

other

Dr. Katarzyna Filutowska is a philosopher, researcher in the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw, philosophy and ethics teacher-lecturer. She is the author of numerous articles on the subject of philosophy, ethics and connections between philosophy and literature. She completed her Ph.D. in 2006 on Friedrich W. J. Schelling and German idealism and M.A. in 1999 on the notion of will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Publications (books): System i opowieść. Filozofia narracyjna w myśli F. W. J. Schellinga w latach 1800-1811 (Wrocław 2007, awarded), Etyka zawodowa. Podręcznik (Warszawa 2009), Filozofia starożytna: subiektywny przewodnik (Opole 2013), Tożsamość narracyjna jako empiryczna podmiotowość: MacIntyre, Taylor, Ricoeur (in preparation)

Identifiers

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/11089/21629