Frankenstein's Promethean dimension
Influence of the mythological Prometheus on Frankenstein / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As the story of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus recounts the making of a kind of human being. The title references Prometheus, a titan in Greek mythology who brought fire to humanity.
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The title of the novel echoes the call of the French materialist philosopher, La Mettrie (1709-1751), in 1747, in his Homme machine, for the advent of a "new Prometheus" who would set in motion a reconstituted human machine.[1][N 1]
Mary Shelley did not invent the expression, which had already been used in the early 18th century and, closer to its end, by Immanuel Kant,[2] and Frankenstein goes far beyond the technical substratum, presenting, in addition to its borrowings from myth, metaphysical, aesthetic and ethical aspects.[3]