Abstract
The origins of gothic literature are more deeply embedded in the distant past than we think. In this chapter I explore the influence upon Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein of Plato’s philosophy of love as outlined in the Symposium and echoed in hebraic kabbalistic writings from the Low and High Middle Ages. Common to both and to Italian Renaissance Christian Kabbalah is the notion of the Sephirotic Tree of Wisdom which links the human with the divine. Mary (via Percy) Shelley was well acquainted with all these concepts and they are both reflected and questioned in Victor Frankenstein’s reaction to the lightning-struck oak and the chain of events it set in motion.
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Shepherd, R.K. (2021). Victor Frankenstein Sullies The Book of Splendour. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gothic Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84562-9_10
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