Key Points in the Introduction to Frankenstein’s Shadow

1. The modern myth is an anomaly

     a. Myths are defined by “their exclusive anteriority to literate and especially modern culture”

     b. Faust, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Jekyll, and Dracula are part of Modern myths

2. Frankenstein became a myth because of its story

     a. Levi-Staruss – a myth’s true substance as myth “does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells.”

     b. Relationship between humans and nature

3. Vitality of a myth lies in its capacity to change.

     a. Most myths are prolonged by being retold or alluded to.

4. Myth is “a mythology of the mind”