Transmedia Creatures

FRANCESCA SAGGINI is a professor of English literature at the Università della Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy. She is the author of many books, including The Gothic Novel and the Stage: Romantic Appropriations.  ANNA E. SOCCIO is a professor of English literature at the Università G. d'Annunzio in Chieti, Italy. She is the author of several books, including Come leggere "Hard Times".

"Mary Shelley's novel has had so many afterlives: the text lives and is constantly reincarnated as an unparalleled text of revision, rewriting, misreading, and overreading in science fiction, film, young adult literature, feminism, biomedical ethics, drama, and many other arenas. On the occasion of the anniversary of the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, editors Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio have gathered an admirably wide range of approaches to that vast afterlife. The productive analyses here of these transmedia incarnations demonstrate the power of Shelley's ur-text and offer delightful opportunities to enliven our teaching and understanding of Frankenstein and his afterlives."— Audrey Fisch, New Jersey City University"One rarely encounters scholarly territory upon which Mary Shelley's peripatetic creature has not already left its mark, but this exceptional collection has managed to uncover new and exciting ground in Frankenstein studies. In Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives, Saggini and Soccio present original interdisciplinary essays by international scholars that explore Shelley's novel as it is incarnated through the lens of multiple media and differing modes of production. Erudite and entertaining, this work gives us a fresh and often-startling view of that famous 'hideous progeny' as it is reborn in everything from fanfiction and steampunk adaptations to musical compositions and video games."— Ghislaine McDayter, Bucknell University"Chronicle of Higher Education new scholarly books weekly book list," by Nina C. Ayoub— Chronicle of Higher Education"The scholarship is sound. . .Transmedia Creatures offers some exciting new avenues to explore in the wake of the bicentenary of Shelley's novel. Recommended."— Choice"Saggini and Soccio's [book] defies expectations and has a great deal to say about the pedagogical uses to which Frankenstein's textual afterlives might be put. [...] many of the essays in this volume, although they don't define themselves that way, might be characterized by what we now call presentist in that they trace how cultural forebodings about the dangers of difference that preoccupy the novel get re-mediated in contemporary culture to address those same concerns. [...] All of these essays are never less than illuminating, in their varied ways, on some understudied or overlooked aspect of the novel's afterlives, as should be obvious from the book's title but is never a given."— European Romantic Review"In Transmedia Creatures, Saggini and Soccio collect a truly international group of thirteen contributors who investigate the ways how Frankenstein adaptations traverse media, genre, and national boundaries....[T]his volume particularly appealing to instructors looking for innovation in teaching the novel."— Science Fiction Studies"In Transmedia Creatures, Saggini and Soccio collect a truly international group of thirteen contributors who investigate the ways how Frankenstein adaptations traverse media, genre, and national boundaries....[T]his volume particularly appealing to instructors looking for innovation in teaching the novel."— Science Fiction Studies"The scholarship is sound. . .Transmedia Creatures offers some exciting new avenues to explore in the wake of the bicentenary of Shelley's novel. Recommended."— Choice"Mary Shelley's novel has had so many afterlives: the text lives and is constantly reincarnated as an unparalleled text of revision, rewriting, misreading, and overreading in science fiction, film, young adult literature, feminism, biomedical ethics, drama, and many other arenas. On the occasion of the anniversary of the 1818 edition of Frankenstein, editors Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio have gathered an admirably wide range of approaches to that vast afterlife. The productive analyses here of these transmedia incarnations demonstrate the power of Shelley's ur-text and offer delightful opportunities to enliven our teaching and understanding of Frankenstein and his afterlives."— Audrey Fisch, New Jersey City University"Chronicle of Higher Education new scholarly books weekly book list," by Nina C. Ayoub— Chronicle of Higher Education"Saggini and Soccio's [book] defies expectations and has a great deal to say about the pedagogical uses to which Frankenstein's textual afterlives might be put. [...] many of the essays in this volume, although they don't define themselves that way, might be characterized by what we now call presentist in that they trace how cultural forebodings about the dangers of difference that preoccupy the novel get re-mediated in contemporary culture to address those same concerns. [...] All of these essays are never less than illuminating, in their varied ways, on some understudied or overlooked aspect of the novel's afterlives, as should be obvious from the book's title but is never a given."— European Romantic Review"One rarely encounters scholarly territory upon which Mary Shelley's peripatetic creature has not already left its mark, but this exceptional collection has managed to uncover new and exciting ground in Frankenstein studies. In Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein's Afterlives, Saggini and Soccio present original interdisciplinary essays by international scholars that explore Shelley's novel as it is incarnated through the lens of multiple media and differing modes of production. Erudite and entertaining, this work gives us a fresh and often-startling view of that famous 'hideous progeny' as it is reborn in everything from fanfiction and steampunk adaptations to musical compositions and video games."— Ghislaine McDayter, Bucknell University

• Abbreviations ixIntroduction: Frankenstein: Presence, Process, Progress Francesca SagginiPA R T ILabs, Bots, and Punks: Transmediating Technology and Science1 Frankenstein and Science Fiction Gino Roncaglia2 Monstrous Algorithms and the Web of Fear: Risk, Crisis, and Spectral Finance in Robert Harris's The Fear Index Lidia De Michelis3 Frankensteinian Gods, Fembots, and the New Technological Frontier in Alex Garland's Ex_Machina Eleanor BealPA R T I IBecoming Monsters: The Limits of the Human4 Staging Steampunk Aesthetics in Frankenstein Adaptations: Mechanization, Disability, and the Body Claire Nally5 Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in the PostcolonyClaudia Gualtieri6 Four- Color Myth: Frankenstein in the Comics Federico MeschiniPA RT I I IThe Evolution Games of Sight and Sound7 "Uncouth and inarticulate sounds": Musico- Literary Traces in Frankenstein, and Frankenstein in Art MusicEnrico Reggiani8 Enter Monsieur le Monstre: Cultural Border- Crossing and Frankenstein in London and Paris in 1826 Diego Saglia9 The Theme of the Doppelgänger in James Searle Dawley's FrankensteinDaniele Pio Buenza10 Perverting the Family: Re- Working Victor Frankenstein's Gothic Blood- Ties in Penny DreadfulRuth HeholtPA R T I VMonster Reflections11 The Masked Performer and "the Mane Electric": The Lives and Multimedia Afterlives of Margaret Atwood's Doctor FrankensteinJanet Larson12 Young Adult Frankenstein Andrew McInnes13 Revivifying Frankenstein's Myth: Historical Encounters and Dialogism in Back from the Dead:The True Sequel to Frankenstein Anna Enrichetta SoccioAcknowledgments Bibliography Index About the Contributors