Frankenstein, roman d’illustrateur

Abstract

Although it was published with no illustrations in 1818, Frankenstein soon became an inexhaustible supply of visual imagery. This process reached a new level in the wake of the 1931 release of the Universal movie featuring Boris Karloff as the monster and has since experienced uninterrupted momentum in mass culture. After a rapid overview of the early visual treatments of the novel and its protagonists, this paper offers an analytical survey of ten illustrated versions of the 1818 or 1831 text published in England and the United States between 1932 and 2018. This corpus shaped around a half-century-long hiatus (1934-1983) is characterized by the artists’ consistent desire to detach themselves from the Hollywood icon’s imagery. By means of various strategies they offer visual interpretations of the novel’s subtexts, particularly in relation to sex, transgression, and death. Unlike standard film or comic adaptations, which cannot function without altering Mary Shelley’s text, each illustrated version—more or less successfully—functions as a transmedia apparatus where the original text becomes part of a larger ensemble that transcends it.