Universität Bielefeld
Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft
Veranstaltung: Grundkurs II Motivgeschichte /Intertextualität
(Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein)
5. Semester

Intertextuality in Ken Russel′s Gothic: The Representation
of the Romantic Period and the Motif of the Artificial Being

von: Anke Grundmann

CONTENTS

0. Introduction 1

1. Concepts of Intertextuality 2

2. The Representation of the Romantic Period in Gothic 4

2.1 Byron and the “Byronic Hero” 4
2.2 Exclusion of Reality 7
2.3 Rejection of Conventions and Morality 7
2.4 The Motifs “Death” and “Night” 8
2.5 The Relation to the “Gothic Novel” 10

3. The Motif of the “Artificial Being” 10

3.1 The Artificial Women 10
3.2 The Being created in the Mind 11

4. Gothic – Fact or Fiction? 14

4.1 Ghost-Story Contest and Scientific Discussions 14
4.2 The Role of Claire 15
4.3 Mary Shelley and her “Child” Frankenstein 15
4.4 Real and Fictional Visions 17
4.5 “Visual” Intertextuality 17

5. Summary 18

6. Works Cited 20

0. Introduction

The film Gothic starring Gabriel Byrne (in the role of Lord Byron), Julian Sands (Percy Bysshe Shelley), Natasha Richardson (Mary [Wollstonecraft Godwin] Shelley), Myriam Cyr (Claire Clairmont) and Timothy Spall (Dr John Polidori) and directed by Ken Russell was made in 1986.

It is difficult to decide whether the film is a horror film or a period film because it contains elements of both genres. The viewer’s judgement depends on his or her previous knowledge of the life of the characters. If the viewer does not recognize the relation between the elements and statements in the film and texts written by and about the protagonists he or she will feel Gothic to be mainly a horror film. In other words intertextuality plays an important role in Gothic. Therefore, the aim of this term paper is to analyze the intertextual relations between the film and various texts. Since there are many different concepts concerning intertextuality I will mostly focus on Julia Kristeva’s idea of intertextuality in the first chapter. In the second chapter the literary historical aspects of Gothic will be examined. The film is set in 1816, i.e. in the second phase of the Romantic period. I will analyze how Ken Russell represents some of the characteristics of the Romantic period in his film. Among others, a motif in the film is the artificial being and the creation of an artificial being respectively. This motif is also the topic of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The third chapter deals on the one hand with the question how the motif „artificial being“ is represented in Ken Russell’s film and on the other hand in how far this parallels the novel Frankenstein and Gothic. Finally, the aim of the fourth chapter is to compare the “real” events around the group of the Villa Diodati with the fictional image the director gives in Gothic.

Concerning the secondary literature to compare to the film I could have used texts about almost all of the characters included. I decided to concentrate on Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. Byron is the most extravagant figure of the five persons. Besides, the atmosphere is very much dominated by him. Furthermore, I have chosen texts about Mary Shelley because the motif of the artificial being is linked with her novel Frankenstein. The main problem of this term paper is to put into words for the reader what normally the viewer perceives with his/her eyes. For a better orientation I will give the minute of the passage I am refering to.

1. Concepts of Intertextuality

In this chapter I want to sum up some of the concepts dealing with intertextuality. Of course it is not possible to present all theories in detail. Therefore, I will concentrate on Julia Kristeva’s idea of intertextuality. According to Shamma Schahadat the common feature of the various concepts of intertextuality is that intertextuality is a „Text-Text-Bezug“.1 Therefore, it seems impossible at first glance to analyse the intertextuality between one or more texts and a film. It becomes clear that there can be intertextuality between different media if one considers Kristeva’s statement that „jedes Zeichensystem [kann] als Text begriffen werden“.2 She defines intertextuality as the „Transposition eines Zeichensystems in ein anderes“.3 Accepting this definition the relation between a text and the film Gothic can be called intertextual.

The aim of this term paper is to analyse the intertextuality between Gothic on the one hand and Mary Shelley’s introduction to her novel Frankenstein, texts dealing with the Romantic period, texts about Mary Shelley and Lord Byron and the novel Frankenstein itself on the other hand. Kristeva defines text as a „Mosaik von Zitaten“.4 In the following chapters it will be shown that Gothic is a mosaic of quotations from these texts. The third aspect of Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality is that she considers the writer of a text as a reader of other texts who uses what he has read in his own text. In the case of Gothic writing is replaced by making the film. The director is the one who „writes“/creates the film by reading and using texts for his film.

Smirnov and Greber call the text that is chronologically produced after another text the „Intertext“, whereas Riffaterre uses this term for the text that existed first. 5 According to the first definition Gothic can be called a intertext. Kristeva does not use the term intertext at all, but distinguishes between a „Genotext“ and a „Phänotext“6. These two terms are related to the terms genotype and phenotype which come from the field of genetics. The genotype contains the hereditary factors whereas the phenotype denotes the outward features that arise from a reaction of the genotype to an environmental influence. Schahadat points out that Kristeva’s concept underlines that „zwischen den Texten immer ein Akt der Interpretation und auch der Transformation stattfindet“.7 In the case of Gothic the Romantic period and the texts produced in this time are genotexts. The phenotext is the film because it interprets the texts. As in genetics the interpretation is influenced by the environment. In other words the interpretation of the Romantic period in Gothic includes modern views.

Apart from distinguishing between different kinds of texts one can divide intertextuality into different types. Genette distinguishes between intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, architextuality and hypertextuality. Among these paratextuality („der Rahmen eine literarischen Werkes, wie Vorwort, Nachwort, Titel etc.“)8 is the one which can be easily recognised in Gothic. The title of the film refers to the Gothic Novel, a form of novel that was popular during the Romantic period. Finally, I come to the devices how intertextuality can be marked. Schahadat proposes the terms “allusion” and “quotation” as generic terms for a wide range of other terms like, e.g. anagram, paragram, connective, allusion and quotation.9 In the following chapters I will show how both allusions to the texts mentioned above and direct quotations are used in Gothic.

2. The Representation of the Romantic Period in Gothic

2.1 Byron and the „Byronic Hero“

[...]

1 Shamma Schahadat, „Intertextualität: Lektüre-Text-Intertext“, Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Miltos Pechlivanos et al. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995) 366.

2 Julia Kristeva, quoted in : Schahadat, „Intertextualität“, 368.

3 Kristeva, quoted in: ibid., 368.

4 Kris teva, quoted in: ibid., 366.

5 Ibid., 370.

6 Kristeva, quoted in: ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Gérard Genette, quoted in: ibid.

9 Cf. Schahadat, 376.