The Scientist Meets the Monster: From Frankenstein to Einstein

When does science go too far? What are (or should be) its limitations? The scientist in literature is often represented as mad because of his willingness to go to any length to advance the cause of science—and never more so than when experiments have unintended consequences or escape the scientist's control. This fear of science and the scientist becomes a serious literary preoccupation during the nineteenth century, when experiments in electricity, reanimation, chemistry, surgery, vivisection, the use of new technologies, and the implications of Darwinism were being widely discussed and their morality questioned. With the birth of the nuclear age in the twentieth century, public anxiety about science and its uses only intensified—and continues to this day. This course examines five works that dramatize the dilemma of the scientist when confronting the monstrosities he creates or those over which science appears to be powerless: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), and C.P. Snow's The New Men (1954). We investigate the medical and scientific backgrounds of these works, the controversies they precipitated, and the authors' unusual storytelling devices. On some occasions, we may consider the filmed versions of these works and how they, too, have contributed to the image of science and the scientist that lurks in the popular imagination.