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Mary Shelley's The Last Man: A Critical Analysis of Anxiety and Authorship

Zolciak, Olivia T.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1479074358312485

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, English.
Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) has been dismissed by scholars since it first became a subject of literary critique in the 1960s. The Last Man comments on a biographical sketch of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a conflicted lineage and Romantic inheritance, a millennial conflict about the need to look forward and backward simultaneously, and a single author's desire to locate her writing in a long classical literary history. Shelley's text is at once a categorical failure of the Gothic genre, and it exemplifies post-apocalyptic, or dystopian, literature. Scholars often criticize Shelley's book through the lens of feminist theory and on the basis of historical—both political and personal—contexts. In my thesis, “Mary Shelley’s The Last Man: A Critical Analysis Of Anxiety And Authorship,” I recuperate the literary importance of The Last Man in the context of feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and the Gothic genre by showing how Shelley’s novel foregrounds various forms of personal and culturally embedded anxiety. Although readers often see Shelley’s anxiety as a psychological or social weakness, it is central to my thesis to show how anxiety is at the core of her work. Shelley’s anxieties as demonstrated in her texts exemplify an innovative approach to not only comment on her personal and political struggles, but they also distance her from her contemporaries, therefore allowing her to create a new literary genre. By critically analyzing the anxiety of illness, national isolation, and authorship through psychoanalytic theory and juxtaposing them with an underdeveloped feminist approach, I suggest that Mary Shelley’s The Last Man is influential in the continuously growing genre of post-apocalyptic literature in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Erin Labbie, PhD (Advisor)
Allan Emery, PhD (Other)
72 p.
Literature
Mary Shelley; The Last Man; anxiety; authorship; apocalypse; anxiety; Stephen King

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Zolciak, O. T. (2017). Mary Shelley's The Last Man: A Critical Analysis of Anxiety and Authorship [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1479074358312485

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Zolciak, Olivia. Mary Shelley's The Last Man: A Critical Analysis of Anxiety and Authorship . 2017. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1479074358312485.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Zolciak, Olivia. "Mary Shelley's The Last Man: A Critical Analysis of Anxiety and Authorship ." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1479074358312485

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1479074358312485
8,144
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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.