Frankenstein as an historical, urban Gothic psycho-thriller – Peter Ackroyd’s rendering of Mary Shelley’s classic in The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
2010
Abstract
In The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008), where Ackroyd reassumes his palimpsestic narrative strategy, which he earlier used in The Great Fire of London (1982) and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), he reworks the story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Ackroyd’s version is set predominantly in London and develops, and toys with, Shelley’s hint of a doppelganger, transforming thus the romantically exotic original into an historical, urban Gothic psycho-thriller.
The aim of this paper is to explore the mechanisms of Ackroyd’s rendering and to show that the genre of the Gothic novel still provides inspiring and revivifying material for the contemporary historical novel.