English 738T, Spring 2015
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Author as Creator – Possible PG Idea

Posted by Denis Dodson on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 at 12:18 am

“I had made her, writing deep into the night by candlelight, until the tiny black letters blurred into stitches and I began to feel that I was sewing a great quilt, as the old women in town do night after night, looking dolefully out their windows from time to time toward the light in my own window and imagining my sins while their thighs tremble under the heavy body of the quilt heaped across their laps, and their strokes grow quicker than machinery and tight enough to score deep creases in the cloth. I have looked with reciprocal coolness their way, not wondering what stories joined the fragments in their workbaskets”

I may have chosen the worst possible day to get sick.  Hopefully this post won’t be too-terribly useless, as I missed the PG class.  However, I am VERY curious about the writing aspects of both PG and Frankenstein.  PG seems to be absolutely dripping with images of writing and creating, but in a very strange, and perhaps more obvious, way compared to Frankenstein.  In both cases, the concept of writing as creation (Walton, for example) seem to be incredibly important.  Particularly in the above quotation, the concept of writing, and “thighs tremble” (perhaps a nod to childbirth?) hints to creation through authorship.  I am not entirely sure what to make of it as of yet, but I believe there is a lot to be made from the authors, as creators of works focusing primarily on creation, in conversation.  Because of this, professor Fraistat’s offering of “an as yet to be articulated “Reference” section that would provide a bibliography for the various citations used in the text as well as including other relevant sources” could be very useful, perhaps, in examining what can be read from the citations present from both a literary and authoritative standpoint as the pieces work in conversation with one another.

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