Frankenstein+-+Nature+or+Nurture?

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= = =William Wordsworth, //Ode: Intimations of Immortality// (extract)=

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem, Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;- Turn whereso'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more...

...Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy...

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= TASKS =

Read Volume 2, Chapter III. How is the monster being presented here?

Ideas about tabula rasa, primitivism and the 'noble savage' all overlap a lot. Can you discern what Shelley's ideas on these topics might have been from reading Volume 2, Chapters III to VII?

Finally, why does the monster end up as he does? Construct a timeline of the chief events in his existence. What is it that makes him 'monstrous'?

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