Creation and Birth in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Its Contemporary Rewritings

This contribution aims first to illustrate the indissolubility in Frankenstein of the two levels of form and meaning – body of the text and body of the Thing – and to highlight the symmetries between the two levels of discourse in order to demonstrate the centrality of the generative-creative process in reference both to the act of textual production and to the identity definition of the creature. Next, it will examine the hypotext’s paradigmatic function for the two contemporary rewritings, Poor Things by Alasdair Gray and Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, which take the hypotext’s narrative strategies and thematic implications to the extreme. The analysis intends to highlight to what extent the shared features in their textual construction (fragmentation, Chinese box structure, and open endings) constitute the symbolic correlative of the Thing’s body. By adopting the narratological paradigm proposed by Winnett (1990), based on the key role of the experience of birth, the essay analyses the dialectical tension between the narrating voices and the function of the open ending in relation to the ineffability of the Thing’s body.