Frankenstein o del mostro innocente

This paper aims to offer an innovative reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by
reflecting on the cultural horizon that influenced the composition of the novel,
namely the Naturphilosophie of the Romantic period, characterized by the interpenetration
of matter and spirit, visible and invisible.
Its major development occurred in German aesthetics of the 18th century, where
the union of sensibility and imagination was harmonically realized through a
special fusion of philosophy and literature. Thanks to this encounter, philosophy
regained its link with the universal and literature became capable of “telling” the
invisible without falling into arbitrariness.
From this theoretical perspective, the monster created by Shelley is not a creative
failure, but something enormous (ungeheuer) that terrifies because it transcends
both our sensitive faculty and our imaginative capacity. Monster is described
here as the place of interaction between visible and invisible, which only the artist
– by placing himself in the middle of this relationship – is able to narrate.