Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley spent the first week of August, 1814, in Paris. One of the places she visited while she was there was the Tuileries Garden:
"The heat of the weather was excessive, so that we were unable to walk except in the afternoon. On the first evening we walked to the gardens of the Thuilleries; they are formal, in the French fashion, the trees cut into shapes, and without grass."
As we read Mary's and Percy's letters in History of a Six Weeks' Tour and Percy's poem, "Mont Blanc," we realize why the sublime Mont Blanc is the place where Victor's encounter with the creature takes place. It's magnificent, terrifying, and almost supernatural, a perfect backdrop for this fateful pair's first meeting since the creation.
Geneva has been associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. There are quite a few allusions to Rouseau and Rousseauvean ideals in the novel. Both Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as her mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) and father (William Godwin) were deeply influenced by Rousseau's ideas of freedom, passion, and sensibility.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Rousseau_Geneve.JPG (Rouseau's statue in Geneva)
Naples--Victor's Birthplace
We tend to think Victor's birthplace is Geneva, since his narrative includes, "I am, by birth, Genevese."
The Storymap site I included in the thread drew my attention to this point.
Consult this timeline to help contextualize the material in the course. Also, feel free to add events that are missing.
Let's use this thread to track Mary and her company's 1816 travel. The same ideas apply with our 1814 site.
Based on the Mary's and Percy's letters in the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, you can locate places of their visit. Use this map to create their travels. You can refer to the existing mapping done by Moskal (I included in the thread below in Mary Shelley's Travel in 1814).
We will use this thread to trace the 1814 travel route of Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Claire. Use this site to deepen your understanding of the sites they visited, historicize their context, and compare some of the places they visited with the scenes that appear in Frankenstein. Think of the ways in which Shelley's experience of the places and cultures inspire and influence her depictions in the novel.
We will create a site to see Victor's travels. There are existing sites that show them, so you can do some research and make this site more substantive and multi-media friendly. Add a short written note with your entry--you can also add a picture or link to add context.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=0842fd3e743f469ead0fe3429b7b37ac
