PAPER 8, Cultural studies

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Name: Brijal N. Oza

Course: M.A. English (SEM – 2)

Paper no.: 8, cultural studies

Topic: circuit of culture

Roll no.: 23

Year: 2015 – 2017

Email ID: brijaloza1994@gmail.com

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi, Department of English

                        M.K. Bhavnagar University

                                Circuit of Culture

vIntroduction of Cultural studies:

                Cultural studies is the science of understanding modern society, with an emphasis on politics and power cultural studies is an umbrella term used to look at a number of different subject. As far as cultural study is concerned, it broader meaning because we see from various perspective them an individual can know what actually in lies in the meaning.

                Generally, it means way of living life or it can also be said that the life style of people and Matthew Arnold also quote about culture study “it is a march towards perfection. Cultural studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigate the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power. Cultures understood as distinctive ways of life. Cultural studies draws on methods and theories from literary studies, sociology, communications studies, history, cultural anthropology and economics. By working across the boundaries among these fields, cultural studies addressed new questions and problems of today world.

vCircuit of Culture:

                The circuit of culture is a theory or framework used in the area of cultural studies. A sophisticated analysis of cultural artifacts requires a close examination of five basic elements, which together constitute what Paul du Gay et al have called ‘the circuit of culture’ (1997). These elements are:

·      Representation

·      Identity

·      Production

·      Consumption

·      Regulation

What these elements present is a process through which every cultural artifact, object or event must pass. The elements work in tandem, and are closely linked with each other, a process that has been called “articulation”.

                In order to illustrate the ‘circuit of culture’ we need to use a concrete example.

Ø Representation:

            Television is a part of modern culture in now-a-days. We depend on TV for entertainment, communication, education, news, culture, information, sports and even music.

                What does the television represent and how it is represented? The answers to these related questions are basically means to discuss the centrality of representation in a culture. Television represents: communication, information and entertainment. Most television ads work with these aspects, with more features and facilities. In this crowded television environment, the key is to provide young children with a guided viewing experience and to model and teach them the critical thinking skills they need to be active, engaged viewers. Because of its ability to create powerful touchstone, television young people to share culture experiences with others.

                By the representation of television, there are lots of benefits like, television can teach important values and life lessons, and educational programming can develop youngsters’ socialization and learning skills. By the representation of television, it can help to develop critical thinking about society and the world and also cultural programming can open up the world of art for young people.  

Another example is “Mobile”. Mobile phones you can find everywhere even in remote area of our country. What mobile represent and how it is represent its concept, system and also we can see that mobile provides people information, entertainment, and also communication and for that all the companies work with these aspects and many more features.

Ø Identity:

            In the identity, there are many questions in our mind, like, what kind of identity does television project? What are the references between state television programs? What kind of age group is targeted in particular kinds of emotional materials?

As we can see the series of questions, posed above are about cultural and public contexts where identities are linked to images screen. Identity is given importance in television serials and family, young professionals, business culture. Identity dives the tone of programs that try to give representation and space the marginalized. Cultural studies is interested in the ideologies that identity projections.

In the mobile, all the companies’ advertisements youth and professionals are given more importance. So here we can say that, the projected and targeted identities of the companies are students, youth and businessman. It was the time when to have mobile is identity of intellectuals, rich, educated and this is same in present time also. Now a days, it becomes trend to have smartphones for youth and it is also becomes an object of showing richness. Steve Jobs says, “The phone was not just communication tool, but away of life.” 

Ø Production:

            In television production programs, there are various forms of media technologies and methods for creating. The theme of production can be phrased as a series of pointed questions:

Look at the major television manufactures. What are the policies in these companies? How is recruitment done? What are policies are in place for workers? How much profit does company make?

These all questions show that in television production is very important feature because it shows us the marketing and growth of production. By television, production companies make them profit at high level by showing various shows, ads etc. and for that way they introduce their products. Above questions are also same for the mobile features because recruitment in mobile phone companies are done by company interviews and placement, most of the companies have fire and hire policies. 

Ø Regulation:

            Consider the union government’s ban on fashion TV, ostensibly because it offends Indian cultural sentiments. What does the government do with regard to either production or consumption? What is the role of the censor board or the information and broadcasting ministry in television sales, production, programs?

            This circuit of culture is the most thorough examination of any cultural artifact. The circuit of culture includes within it several smaller companies and modes of analysis. Cultural studies today, in most academies across the world, adopt certain key areas and methods to understand the modes of meaning production. These are: language, discourse

, identity, everyday life, ethnography, media studies, cultural intermediaries.

            Language and meaning are connected to issues of class, power, ideology and the material conditions in which the speaking or interpretations occurs. All expression and use of language are situated in a context. This context is discourse. This is discourse is the context in which a culture’s communication, meaning production and interpretation occur. It is the terrain of thought and expression.

            The identity of a person is for, cultural studies. Dependent upon the roles played by that person, the signs that designate the person. Identity is constituted through experience, and representation is a significant part of experience.

In the regulation, here I want to give one example regarding mobile that as government of India banned selling of Xiaomai mobiles in December, 2014 as it has duplicated and fake unique id. So there is committee to handle all these matters and it has its own policies and with these it has import and exports the policies.

Ø Conclusion:

            The ‘circuit of culture’ is perhaps the most thorough examination of any cultural artifact. As we can see it covers a range of issues and themes – from the question of media representation to the construction of identities in a culture. Now a day’s televisions and mobiles have passed through this examination and it becomes a part of culture. The ‘circuit of culture’ includes within it several smaller components and modes of analysis.

“Primarily culture is connected with the production and exchange of meanings between the members of society of group. 
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paper-7 , Literary theory and criticism

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Name: Brijal N. Oza

Course: M.A. English (sem-2)

Paper no.: 7, literary theory and criticism

Topic: Gerard Ganette’s Narratology

Roll no.: 23

Year: 2015 – 2017

Email ID: brijaloza1994@gmail.com

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi, Department of English

                        M.K. Bhavnagar University

        GERARD GENETTE’S NARRATOLOGY

·     Introduction of the Writer:

                Gerard Genette (born-1930) is a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Levi – Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of ‘bricolage’.

                He is largely responsible for the reintroduction of a rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism, for example such terms as trope and metonymy. Additionally his work on narrative, best known in English through the selection “Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method”, has been of importance. His major work is the multi part Figures series, of which Narrative Discourse is a section.

                His international influences is not as great as that of some others identified with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss; his work is more often included in selections or discussed in secondary works than studied in its own right. Terms and techniques originating in his vocabulary and systems have, however, become widespread, such as the term paratext for prefaces, introductions, illustrations or other material accompanying the text, or hypo text for the sources of the text.

·      What is Narratology?

                In dictionary meaning, “The branch of knowledge or criticism that deals with the structure and function of narrative and its themes, conventions and symbols”.

                In order to understand, Narratology contribution to semiotics, it is important to grasp the distinction between its three fundamental entities: story, narrative, and narration. Narratology, in literary theory the study of narrative structure. Narratology looks at what narratives have in common and what makes one different from another. Narratology refers to both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception.

                In Narratology, narrative structure is a literary element. It is generally described as the structural framework that underlines the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener or viewer. Generally, the narrative structure of any work like, be it a film, play or novel – contains a plot, theme and resolution.  

·      Five Aspects of Narratology:

              This outline of Genette’s Narratology is derived from “Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method”. This book form part of his multi- volume work Figures I-III. The examples used in it are mainly drawn from Proust’s epic “In Search of Lost Time”.      One criticism which had been used against previous forms of Narratology was that they could deal only with simple stories, such as Vladimir Prop’s work in “Morphology of the Folk Tale”. If Narratology could cope with Proust, this could no longer be said. 

              In Gerard Genette’s Essay, he discusses five aspects of Narratology. Gerard Genette gives the Narratology in order to understand the structure of the literature.

              Below are the five main concepts used by Genette in Narratology discourse: An Essay in Method. They are primarily used to look at the syntax of narratives, rather than to perform an interpretation of them.

Five aspects are: 1) Order

                              2) Frequency

                              3) Duration

                              4) Voice

                              5) Mood

·      ORDER

          This concept is totally upon the circumstances and the situation which take place in the narration. How the story is said by the writer is important. In this concept we can include the flashback technique and the revelation of an important event.

      In order, a story is as follow:

Ø murder occurs (event – A)

Ø The circumstances of the murder are revealed to a detective (event – B)

Ø The murderer is caught (event – C)

For example: “36 China Town”, in this movie we can see the same event as we discussed early that first murder occurs then characters and murderer is revealed by the detective (inspector) and at the end murderer is caught and then end of the story.

Arranged chronologically the events run as:

Ø A1 (a murder occurs)

Ø B2 (the circumstances of murder revealed)

Ø C3 (at the end murderer is caught)

And arranged in the text they run as:

Ø B1 (discovery)

Ø A2 (flashback)

Ø C3 (resolution)

This accounts for the ‘obvious’ effects the reader will recognize, such as flashback. It also deals with the structure of narratives on a more systematic basis, accounting for flash – forward, simultaneously, as well as possible, if rarely used effects. These disarrangements on the level of order are termed ‘anarchrony’.

·      FREQUENCY:

              In this first concept he talks about the different order of the different texts and films etc. the separation between an event and its narration allows several possibilities:

1) An event can occur once and be narrated once (singular) ex.: ‘Today I went to the school’.

2)  An event can occur n times and be narrated once (iterative) ex.: ‘I used to go to the school’.

3) An event can occur once and be narrated n times (repetitive) ex.: ‘today I went to the school’ + ‘today he went to the school’.

4) An event can occur n times and be narrated n times (multiple) ex.: ‘today I go to the school’ + ‘he used to go to the school’.

         For example, an event can occur once and be narrated once (singular). In the movie “Rang de Basanti” we will find that the characters are shown as they are the freedom fighters repeatedly. Or in the novel “White Tiger”, we will find the word ‘door’ used by the writer.

         An event can occur n times and be narrated once (iterative). In the movie “Gajini”, we will find that because of the villain Gajini, the hero is spending sleepless nights. The narration of this event comes only once in the movie but we can see the narration of the sleepless nights of the hero.

         An event can occur and be narrated n times (repetitive). Here I would like to give the example of the example of the novel “Bluest Eye”. In which the protagonist suffers a lot and her molestation by her father, which is narrated once but we can see her suffering a lot (after effects of her rap by her father). Another example of the novel “Half Girlfriend” by Chetan Bhagat that Madhav don’t know how to speak English properly and this kind of events and narration we will find time and again in the novel.

·      DURATION:

              The separation between an event and its narration that there is discourse time and narrative time. These are the two main elements of duration.

1) “Five years passed”, has a lengthy discourse time, five years, but a short narrative time (it only took a second to read).

2) James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” has a relatively short discourse time, twenty-four hours. Not many people, however, could read Ulysses in twenty-four. Thus, it is safe to say it has a lengthy narrative time.

                  As an example, it takes just a second in passing the 5 or 10 years in the novel where as some times our more time passes where as in the novel it was just an hour. In Raj Kumar Hirani’s movie, “3 Idiots”, in its Farhan who narrates the story. For example in the novel “To the light House”, we will find the time passes in the second part.

·      VOICE:

              Voice is concerned with two questions: 1) who narrates? And from where? This can be split four ways.

Where the narration is from:

1) Intra – diegetic: inside the text. Ex.: Willkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859)

2) Extra – diegetic: outside the text. Ex.: Thomas hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Is the narrator a character in the story?

1) Hetero – diegetic: the narrator is not a character in the story. Ex. Homer’s “The Odyssey” or also in “Samay” in Mahabharat.

2)   Homo – diegetic: the narrator is a character in the story. Ex.: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights pilgrim’s Progress.

·      MOOD:

              Genette said narrative mood is dependent on the ‘distance’ and ‘perspective’ of the narrator, and like music, narrative mood has predominant patterns. It is related to voice. Distance of the narrator changes with narrated speech, transposed speech and reported speech. Perspective of the narrator is called focalization. Narratives can be non-focalized, internally focalized or externally focalized. Like music it also has a kind of pattern.

Here, some of the examples of the movies and serials which show us five parts of Narratology:

v Here, I have tried to analyze the movie ‘Ek Villain’ is released in 2014 and Indian thriller directed by Mohit Suri. In order, it has B then A then C, the event/murder has already occurred. It starts with the funeral of the Aisha (Shradhdha Kapoor). After movie went to the flashback, where Guru (Sidhdharth Malhotra) remembers the time which they spend together present and it ends after hero takes revenge of his beloved’s murder. In frequency, the dialogue “A…. Villain….” is repeatedly used in the movie, though it was just spoken only one time by heroin, it gives her remembrance to him. In duration, the narrator takes us two years back in past. In voice, narrator is unknown, even he is not character “I” the story. And in the mood, the narrator is compassionate with the pain of hero.  

v In serials like, Crime Patrol and C.I.D help us to understand the Narratology where we find order, mood, duration, narrative techniques etc. First the murder is attempted then the officers come to know about it and then the culprit is caught.

vThe movie “Gurv” is also in the sequence of B1 (discovery), A2 (flashback), C3 (resolution). In which the protagonist is in the jail as he had committed a murder, after it flashback came and at the end we came to know about that why he had committed a crime.

vWhere in the movie of “Drishyam” is arranged in the sequence of A1 (murder occurs), B2 (circumstances of murder is revealed), C3 (at the end, murderer is caught). This is Bollywood movie with the genre of mystery and thriller directed by Nishikant Kamat.  The movie starts with the ending part of story but the beginning scene of the movie and the protagonist flows in flashback sitting in a police station and a murder occurs and in B2 part, where the circumstances are revealed to the audience properly but not to the detectives, they know the mystery of murder but there is lack of evidence. But in the C3 part, murderer should be caught but in the movie, murderer has successfully escaped and living happily.

                        So, at the end, we can say that Gerard Genette’s Narratology is shown in movies, serials, novels and his five aspects is also we can see in the novels, moves and T.V. serials.
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paper-6 , the victorian literature

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Name: Brijal N. Oza

Course: M.A. English (SEM. – 2)

Paper no. : 6, the Victorian Age

Topic: Victorian Age and its Poet

Roll no.: 23

Year: 2015 – 2017

Email ID: brijaloza1994@gmail.com

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English

                        M.K. Bhavnagar University

              VICTORIAN AGE and ITS POETS

vIntroduction of the Victorian Age:

                        The Victorian Age is known as “The Modern Period of Progress and Unrest”.

                        The Victorian Age is believed to be from 1850 – 1900, when Victoria became Queen in 1837. English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age.

                       

                        Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron and Scott had passed away. Keats and Shelley were dead but already there had appeared three disciples of those poets who were destined to be far more widely read than were their masters. Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems appearing in almost simultaneously with the last works of Byron, Shelley and Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication of his collected poems, two volumes that England recognized in him one of her great literary leaders.

                        Elizabeth Barrett Browning had been writing since 1820. Browning had published his ‘Pauline’ in 1833. But in 1846, when ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ were published, people began reading his works and started appreciating him. A group of pose writers had emerged in like Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle and Ruskin.

                        In this age, the long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for personal liberty was settled and democracy was established. The house of commons becomes the ruling power in England and a series of new reform bills rapidly extend the surface, until the whole body of English people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them.

       The Poets of the Victorian Age     

·      Alfred Tennyson

·      Robert Browning

·      Elizabeth Barrett Browning

·      Matthew Arnold

·      Dante Gabriel Rossetti

·      William Morris

·      Algernon Charles Swinburne

·      Arthur Hugh Clough

                Brief Introduction of all Poets

vALFRED TENNYSON:

                Tennyson was born in the rectory of Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. The sweet influences of his early natural surroundings can be better understood from his early poems than from any biography.

                Tennyson’s life is a remarkable one in this respect, that from beginning to end he seems to have been dominated by a single impulse, the impulse of poetry. He had no large or remarkable experience, no wild oats to sow, any great successes or reverses, any business cares or public offices. Tennyson was naturally shy, retiring, and indifferent to men, hating noise and publicity, loving to be alone with nature like Wordsworth. Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of poetry in England. For nearly half a century Tennyson was not only a man and a poet; “he was a voice, the voice of a whole people”. In the wonderful variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England’s greatest poets.      

                In reflecting the restless spirit of this progressive age, Tennyson is as remarkable as Pope was in voicing the artificially of the early 18^th century. As a poet, who expresses not so much a personal as a national spirit, he is the most representative literary man of the Victorian era. At the outset of our study of Tennyson’s works, it may be well to record two things, by way of suggestion.

First: Tennyson’s poetry is not so much to be studied as to be read and appreciated; he is a poet to have open on one’s table, and to enjoy as one enjoys his daily exercise.

Second: We should by all means begin to get acquainted with Tennyson in the days of our youth.

Tennyson’s poetry is to be externally young, and like Adam in Paradise, to find every morning a new world, fresh, wonderful, inspiring, as if just from the hands of God.

                In his poems, ‘The Princess and Maud’, a long poem by over three thousand lines of blank verse. Another work of Tennyson is ‘In Memoriam’, which on account of both its theme and its exquisite workmanship, is “one of the few immortal names that were not born to die”. The immortality of human love is the theme of the poem, which is made up over one hundred different lyrics. Another one is ‘The Idylls of the King’ ranks among the greatest of Tennyson’s later works.

                So, in a marvelously complex age, and amid a hundred great men, he was regarded as a leader. For a full half century he was the voice of England, loved and honored as a man and a poet.

vROBERT BROWNING:

                Robert Browning was born on 7^th May, 1812 and died on 12^th December, 1889. He was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the most Victorian poets.

                It was an obscure early poem ‘Pauline’ that brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By the time of his wife’s death (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) in 1861, his stock was beginning to rise with a major collection ‘Men and Women’ followed by the long blank verse poem ‘The Ring and the Book’. He is better known today for his shorter poems such as ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ and ‘How Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’.

                He was a great admired of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley. In March 1833, Pauline a fragment of a confession was published, it is a long poem composed in homage to Shelley and somewhat in his style. In 1834, began writing ‘Paracelsus’ which was published in 1835. In 1838, he visited Italy, looking for background for ‘Bordello’, a long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of by Dante in the divine comedy. ‘Canto 6 of Purgatory’, this was published in 1840 and met with widespread division, gaining him the reputation of Wanton carelessness and obscurity.

                 ‘The Ring and the Book’ was the poet’s most ambitious project and arguably his greatest work; it has been praised as a dramatic poetry, published in four volumes from November 1868 throughout February 1869, the poem was a success both commercially and critically and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought for nearly forty years.

                 

vMATTHEW ARNOLD:

“Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things”.  –Matthew Arnold

                Matthew Arnold (24^th December, 1822-15 April, 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. Arnold published his second volume of poems in 1852, he published poems: ‘A New Edition’, a selection from two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ and ‘The Scholar Gipsy’.

                In 1854, ‘Poems: Second Series’ appeared; also a selection, it is included the new poem, ‘Balder Dead’. Arnold is sometimes called the third lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. Arnold was keenly aware of his place in poetry.

                In his poetry, he derived not only the subject matter of his narrative poems from various traditional or literary sources but even much of the romantic melancholy of his earlier.

v   WILLIAM MORRIS:

                William Morris was an English poet, English textile designer, novelist, translator and social activist. He achieved success with the publication of his epic poems and novels namely ‘The Earthly Paradise’ (1868-70). His first poems were published when he was 24 years old. His first volume, ‘The Defense of Guinevere and Other Poems’ (1858) was the first book of pre-Raphaelite poetry to be published. ‘The Haystack in the Floods’ is his one of the best known poem. One early, minor poems were ‘Masters in his Hall’ (1860), a Christmas Carol written to an old French time. Another Christmas theme poem is ‘The Snow in the Street’.      

vDANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI:

                Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848, with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.

                His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterized by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life.

                He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ (1849), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as ‘Goblin Market’ by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister. He worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante’s ‘La Vita Nuwa’.

vALGERNON CHARLES SWINNBURNE:

                Algernon Charles Swinburne was one of the most accomplished lyric poets of this age and was a prominent symbol of rebellion against the conservative values of his time. Later works are ‘By the North Sea’, ‘Evening on the Broads’, ‘The Lake of Gaube’.

vELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:

                Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on 6^th March, 1806 and died on 29^th June, 1861. He was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime.

                Her first adult collection, ‘The Seraphim and  prolifically between 1841-1844 producing poetry. Elizabeth’s volume ‘poems’ (1844) brought her great success.

                She is remarkable for poems like ‘How Do I Love Thee’ and ‘Aurora Leigh’. She wrote her own Homeric epic ‘The Battle of Marathon: A Poem’. Her first collection of poems, ‘An Essay on Mind’, with other poems, was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics.   
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Paper-5 , the romantic literature

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Name: Brijal N. Oza

Course: M.A. English (sem-2)

Paper no.: 5, the Romantic Literature

Topic: Frankenstein: As a Romantic Novel

Roll no.: 23

Year: 2015 – 2017

Email ID: brijaloza1994@gmail.com

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi, Department of English

                        M.K. Bhavnagar University

       FRANKENSTEIN: As a Romantic Novel

v Brief Introduction of The Age:

              The first half of 19^th century is recorded as the ‘Romantic Age’. The Romantic Age is believed to have started as a movement, which began to 1789 with publication of Lyrical Ballads. However it was not a sudden outburst but the result of long and gradual growth and development.

                Imagination, emotion and freedom are certainly the focal paints of Romantic Age, and also include subjectively, spontaneity, freedom from rules, solitary life rather than life in society.

                Common people had begun to read and also understand the values of individualism. The declaration of independence and the English reform bill. So, it is also known as “The Age of Revolution”.    

                The age is measured by the two great event; that were…… (i) The First Revolution

                        (ii) The Publication of the Lyrical Ballads.

Romantic ideas that….

        “Imagination never gives the Originality”.

        “Imagination and Emotions are more important than reason and formal rules”.

Romantic Age’s most important features are it’s celebration of nature, it’s juxtaposition of the beautiful and struggle of the individual against society.

vIntroduction of the Writer:

                Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on 30^th August, 1797 and died on 1^st February, 1851.

                She was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer and travel writer, best known for her gothic novel- Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818). In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Claremont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

                She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

                In 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish P.B. Shelley’s works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptation. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823).

                Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in family, were the ways to reform civil society.

                This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantics ethos promoted by P.B. Shelley and the enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Here, many of the main ideas behind the literary movement of romanticism can be seen in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley was deeply influenced by the romantics, and the reader of Frankenstein can certainly identify a number of characteristics of romanticism in this novel.

vFrankenstein as a Romantic Novel:

             Mary Shelley’s 1818 masterpiece, Frankenstein, is a classic romantic era novel. Learn about a few of the most prominent features of the Romantic Movement and see how Shelley used these features to construct her classic horror tale.

             The novel is failed attempt at artificial life, by the scientist Frankenstein, which produced a monster. The work is considered to be a mixture of science fiction, gothic novel and having elements from the Romantic Movement. Frankenstein is infused with elements of the gothic novel and the Romantic Movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction.

             Frankenstein is the story of a named scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates an odd but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. This is the book about the morality, belonging and the vital importance of human connecting in making us human. The creation of myth within the book has served as inspiration for modern films graphics novels songs and even horror-themed episodes of numerous television shows.

             The term ‘Romance’ and the related adjective, ‘Romantic’, have varied meanings and contexts. Now-a-days, if we say a story is romantic we generally mean that it’s a love story, but in a historical sense, the term has a wider meaning when applied to literature.

             Romantic literature, with a capital “R”, refers to writing from towards the end of the 18^th century into the opening decades of the 19^th. As historical literary terms, ‘romantic’ refer to novels and poetry of stirring adventure, high drama, inflated emotions and passions, strange, faraway places, and very often supernatural power.

             Frankenstein includes practically all the elements listed above. As the poet and writer is free to write on any theme and any form he or she likes and as a result we have a wide variety of romantic literature as the poets and writer is driven by powerful passion and imagination, he does not care for the perfection of form.

             Frankenstein is romantic because it shows a love of nature and the natural world. The fact that Victor was born into a high family is also romantic. The focus on animal and the natural order of things. The beauty of the world and the emphasis on strong emotion and family. In the Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrayed some love of the beauty of the nature and unsigned power of the nature. As a poets and writers, they were always interested in the beauty and unsigned power of nature. For them imaginative world was more real than the real world.

             For example – we noticed in these below quotation love of the beauty of the nature.

“I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observation that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities constant forever.”

“I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysterious of the ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.”

             It is Mary Shelley’s imaginative world and for her it is more real than the real. Because she gave the shape of the male as they are in reality. Misery, gloom and despair- these are romantic conventionalities, feelings indulged in rather than as impetus to action. The characters, Victor Frankenstein and the creature both exemplify these romantic conventionalities. Mary Shelley’s novel as representative of the romantic era because it typifies the most important ideas of the era.

             On a more symbolic level, Frankenstein is clearly a novel about romantic striving against the customary boundaries or limitations placed on our existence. First, there is the obvious example of Victor Frankenstein pushing against his limitation as a human being by striving to play a God- like role by making the creature. For Victor, it is not satisfying enough to simply study philosophy and science and proceed on to a respectable profession. He must perfect the role of the scientist by attempting to accomplish the impossible, a process which is inevitably frustrated, as it must be, by the fact that oversleeping human boundaries has significant consequence. Shelley’s Frankenstein is not a mad scientist, as his character has been reduced to over the years, but a scientist who is passionate about the primary questions of his time.

             In his romantic quest for a scientific ideal – the perfect human – he creates a monster, which then must be held in check by other system and institutions that humans have also created. This novel helps the reader understand that there is no such state as perfection, there is no social experiment, whether based on reality in fantasy that will result in an ideal solution.

             In a twist on the typical romantic text, this, if it does end happily, ends on a thoughtful, meditative note; this novel ends with the characters having effect no significant resolution amongst themselves. They have all realized the impossibility of striving against the roles to which they do not seem to be able to identify any other options for themselves.

             Mary Shelley treat nature in different way, she treats nature v/s nature. Here Frankenstein wants to create Monster and it is against of the rule of the nature. And maybe that is why at the end of the novel he got nothing accepts tragic fact because too much exaggeration is always destroying. Through the description of nature we find romantic spirit in Frankenstein. So, we find that romantic spirit in Frankenstein is everywhere. People free to think, free to imagination and they are individual.

vCONCLUSION:

             Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” examines many social issues present during the romantic period. So, as a discussion of whole things with various aspects in details, we may conclude that the novel is written in Romantic age because through the novel has different feathers of romantic spirit includes the whole characteristics of romantic age.

             The novel has imagination, freedom of expression, individualism, quest for knowledge, awareness about literature and all that things are already there.

             An analysis of its context reveals just how much it draws upon the romantic dogma of the 1800s and how Shelley attempts to warns us the consequences of our fixation with omnipotence and our ventures into unrestrained scientific progress.    

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