a point of view to the imagination
This diction, like the subtitle and the epigraph, is meant to drape
Frankenstein with a seriousness of purpose not customary among
popular gothic novels. To students of British Romanticism, it is language
that is characteristic of Percy Bysshe
Shelley's own practices in the
prefatory matter to his poems. He frequently accentuates his attempt to
transcend through imaginative means the normative, or "ordinary," thoughts
and passions of humanity. See, for example, the first paragraph of the Preface to "Alastor" (published in
March 1816) or his
explanation of the use of dramatic imagery in the Preface to The Cenci (1820). The reader will discover
that the uses of the imagination are likewise to become a recurring theme
in the novel.
