<美的なもの>と排除の構造 : 一八世紀美学の言説から『フランケンシュタイン』へ

概要

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In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) one finds numerous instances of the 'sublime', the 'beautiful' and the 'picturesque'-all established aesthetic categories of eighteenth-century Britain. For the most part, these concepts tend to be cliche and highly ornamental, as is typical in most Gothic novels. The 'sublime' can be seen in Victor Frankenstein's heroic boldness of scientific experiment as well as in the grandeur of the mountaneous scenery of the Alps. They are both sublime and masculine, while the ugliness of the 'creature' gives a negative impression of sublimity with its strong terror. The story itself takes the form of letters addressed to Margaret, who is absent from the drama and who may thus subvert its apparent meaning through her female sensibility. One can also interpret the 'creature' as a collective image of unnamed Others within Victor himself, which could in turn be projected upon real savages, oriental people, the infamous mobs of the French Revolution or a co rporeal subject of 'unmanly' (i.e. effeminate) taste. Here the 'aesthetic' in general, together with its principle of 'disinterestedness' or 'standard of taste', reveals its immanent differentiation and exclusion through the distortion and monstrosity of its own mirror image.
1998-12-31