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Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus''. In popular culture, the creature is often referred to as "Frankenstein" after the creature's creator Victor Frankenstein, but in Shelley's novel the creature is nameless. The novel's title compares Victor Frankenstein to the mythological figure Prometheus, because of what both of those figures brought to life. In Shelley's horror story, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method consisting of chemistry and alchemy. Shelley describes the monster as , hideously ugly, but sensitive and emotional. The monster attempts to fit into human society, but is shunned, which leads him to seek revenge against his creator. According to the scholar Joseph Carroll, the monster occupies "a border territory between the characteristics that typically define protagonists and antagonists".〔Caroll, Joseph et al. ''Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning'', (p. 30 ) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).〕 ==Namelessness== Mary Shelley's original novel never ascribes an actual name to the monster; although the monster does call himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the "Adam of your labours" (in reference to the first man created in the Bible). Victor refers to the monster as "creature", "fiend", "spectre", "the demon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being" and "ogre". It has become common vernacular to refer to the creature by the name "Frankenstein", though this never actually happens in the book. In addition to this, calling the monster "Frankenstein" sometimes results in confusion with his creator, Victor Frankenstein. As in Mary Shelley's story, the monster's namelessness became a central part of the stage adaptations in London and Paris during the decades after the novel's first appearance. In 1823, Shelley herself attended a performance of ''Presumption'', the first successful stage adaptation of her novel. "The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatis personae came _________, by Mr T. Cooke," she wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt. "This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good." Within a decade of publication, the name of the creator—Frankenstein—was used to refer to the monster, but it did not become firmly established until much later. The story was adapted for the stage in 1927 by Peggy Webling, and Webling's Victor Frankenstein does give the creature his name. However, the monster has no name in the Universal film series starring Boris Karloff during the 1930s, which was largely based upon Webling's play.〔Young, William and Young, Nancy. (''The 1930s'' ), p. 199 (Greenwood Publishing Group 2002).〕 The 1931 Universal film treated the monster's identity in a similar way as Shelley's novel: in the opening credits, the character is referred to merely as "The Monster" (the actor's name is replaced by a question mark but Karloff is listed in the closing credits).〔Schor, Esther. (''The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley'' ), p. 82 (Cambridge U. Press 2003).〕 Nevertheless, the creature soon enough became best known in the popular imagination as "Frankenstein". This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of "Frankenstein" as well-established and not an error. Modern practice varies somewhat. For example, In Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, first published in 2004, the creature is named "Deucalion", after the character from Greek Mythology, who is the son of the titan Prometheus, a reference to the original novel's title. Another example is the second episode of Showtime's ''Penny Dreadful'', which first aired in 2014; Victor Frankenstein briefly considers naming his creation "Adam", before deciding instead to let the monster "pick his own name". Thumbing through a book of the works of Shakespeare, the monster chooses "Proteus" from ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona''. It is later revealed that Proteus is actually the ''second'' monster Frankenstein has created, with the first, abandoned creation having been named "Caliban", from ''The Tempest'', by the theatre actor who took him in. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frankenstein's monster」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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