Neohelicon
Volume/Issue:
Volume 34: Issue 1
The modern Prometheus and the interpretive communities
Author:
Péter Hajdu Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute for Literary Studies H-1118 Budapest Ménesi út 11-13 Hungary H-1118 Budapest Ménesi út 11-13 Hungary

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Pages:
59–66
Online Publication Date:
27 Apr 2007
Publication Date:
27 Jun 2007
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-007-1006-x
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Abstract  

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a text read by completely different groups of readers, and therefore it may be a tempting medium for research on interpretive communities. The paper analyses the possible strategies of elite and popular interpretations. For a typical elite strategy it uses the myth of Prometheus as interpretive subtext of the novel, while as an example of typical popular interpretation it makes use of Kenneth Branagh’s film-adaptation. The differences can be regarded as the result of loss of meaning, since the sophisticated connections that can be elaborated in a professional reading simply disappear in a popular one; but a popular reading involves not only loss, since new meanings appear through an intertextual process of popular interpretation that adapts the text to horror genre conventions more closely. Features that seem adequate to the popular genre tend to be highly emphasised, while, as a negative correlate of this very same process, features that are unfamiliar with the popular genre are simply omitted.

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Neohelicon
Print ISSN:
0324-4652
Online ISSN:
1588-2810

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Neohelicon
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1973
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 2
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 0324-4652 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2810 (Online)

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