MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN TRANSLATED: MONSTROSITY AND DEMONISATION

Abstract

This paper discusses Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the 1831 edition) in view of its interpretations along the lines of monstrosity and demonisation, and how these relate to the language of the first Bulgarian translation of the novel in 1981. It touches upon the act of creation, science and the scientist, and deviation as monstrosity before it focuses on the intertextualities with Milton’s Paradise Lost and Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It also elaborates on the untranslatability of cultural layers when it comes to connotations or to the ambivalent usage of words such as daemon.