Beaugrand’s story opens with a group of hunters, woodsmen and militia spending the Christmas period in Fort Richelieu, Quebec. ![]() This setting echoes another Canadian werewolf narrative, Henry Beaugrand’s ‘The Werwolves' (1898). Set in the nineteenth century, the two sisters are trapped in an isolated fort surrounded by frozen forest and attacked by werewolves. The final film in the trilogy, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004), answers the concerns regarding the ending of the first film – Brigitte kills her sister Ginger, the werewolf of the title − whilst drawing on earlier Gothic traditions. Ginger Snaps (2000) has been recognised as an exemplary example of feminist horror, yet the sequels have received little attention. All nine monstrosities appear to reflect upon Victor’s creature to make him seem more monstrous, but the creature is actually the mirror of a monstrous society and not an embodiment of monstrosity himself. ![]() The last three monstrosities examine the role of animals, women, and family in the novel, and how the creature reflects these various aspects in the context of how Shelley experienced them in the nineteenth-century. The three physical and mental monstrosities address the creature’s hybridity, strength, and mental acuity as a reflection of monstrous births, and Shelley’s own experience with human frailty and mental instability. The first three monstrosities connect the creation of the creature, his soul, and the science used to create him with the theological debates of the period regarding Christian resurrection, the status of the slave’s soul, and the changing status of science in Shelley’s era. Shelley addressed the monstrosities of her society through the creature, nine of which have been selected for this study and assorted into three categories: three spiritual, three physical and mental, and three social. Through a textual and historical analysis, this thesis will elucidate the spiritual, physical, mental, and social monstrosities within Frankenstein. This thesis argues that there is no monster, and Shelley’s intention was to display the monstrosity of her own society –– not to write a monster novel. By focusing on a single embodiment, scholars have neglected the monstrous aspects pervasive in the novel and ignored the fact that Shelley’s creature actually reflects nineteenth-century Britain. To date, the majority of scholars have framed the creature in Frankenstein as a monster. Throughout this analysis, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein remains a touchstone, serving as an ideal metaphor for the nature of contemporary remix culture. This thesis aims to address that gap in scholarship, analysing Frankenfiction’s engagement with monstrosity (chapter one), parody (chapter two), popular historiography (chapter three), and models of authorial originality (chapter four). Too engaged with tradition for some, and not traditional enough for others, Frankenfiction is a bestselling genre that nevertheless remains peripheral to academic discussion. Frankenfiction is monstrous not only because of the fantastical monsters it contains, but because of its place at the margins of both remix and more established modes of appropriation. I do so by examining remix culture’s most ‘monstrous’ texts: Frankenfictions, or commercial narratives that insert fantastical monsters (zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc.) into classic literature and popular historical contexts. With this context in mind, in this thesis I explore the boundaries and connections between remix culture and its ‘others’ (adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, postmodernism), asking how strong or tenuous they are in practice. ![]() This is especially true within the institutions such remixes seem to attack most directly: the heritage industry, high art, adaptation studies, and copyright law. Like other popular texts before them, remixes, mashups, and reboots are often read by critics as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. Like monsters, they offer audiences the thrill of transgression in a safe and familiar format, mainstreaming the self-reflexive irony and cultural iconoclasm of postmodern art. ![]() Consumed by popular audiences on an unprecedented scale, but often derided by critics and academics, these texts are the ‘monsters’ of our age-hybrid creations that lurk at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. In the twenty-first century, the remix, the mashup, and the reboot have come to dominate Western popular culture.
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