There is no lack of material on the Internet about this famous novel. Those of you doing the 2009-2012 HSC in NSW must compare it with Scott Ridley’s 1982 movie Blade Runner, which you will also find on this site. You must attend especially to the context in which each work emerged, issues of genre, and issues of language and technique, as well as of course forming ideas about the great themes each work embodies.
- The Literary Gothic is a site you will want to visit. See Shelley, Mary.
- My Hideous Progeny is a site devoted to the novel.
- You will find some essays by Kim A. Woodbridge of Maryland USA and others here.
- You will find quite a number of things via Google Books, for example Mary Shelley in Her Times edited by Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (Johns Hopkins University Press 2000).
- Mary Shelley: The Expert View comes from the BBC.
- The similarities between Frankenstein and Blade Runner are quite staggering, according to this site from Texas.
- This course-work site from a US university asks some interesting questions about Blade Runner, even if you may need some guidance with the pomo jargon…
Look at this essay: Frankenstein as Lucy (PDF).
There is also Romanticism: an Overview on The Victorian Web. See especially Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (1818) — A Summary of Modern Criticism.
Two YouTube videos follow; if you are at school these may just be blank spaces! Try at home.
Kenneth Branagh 1994
Opening of Blade Runner
See also Studying the Gothic, or Emily Bronte?.
- The course material for this unit prepared by Melpomene Dixon for the English Teachers’ Association NSW is really excellent!
- I have since done a follow-up post.