Description
Beyond her most famous creation-the nightmarish vision of Frankenstein's Creature-Mary Shelley's most enduring influence on politics, literature, and art perhaps stems from the legacy of her lesser-known novel about the near-extinction of the human species through war, disease, and corruption. This novel, The Last Man (1826), gives us the iconic image of a heroic survivor who narrates the history of an apocalyptic disaster in order to save humanity-if not as a species, then at least as the practice of compassion or humaneness. In visual and musical arts from 1826 to the present, this postapocalyptic figure has transmogrified from the "last man" into the globally familiar filmic images of the "invisible man" and the "final girl."
Reading Shelley's work against the background of epidemic literature and political thought from ancient Greece to Covid-19, Eileen M. Hunt reveals how Shelley's postapocalyptic imagination has shaped science fiction and dystopian writing from H. G. Wells, M. P. Shiel, and George Orwell to Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, and Emily St. John Mandel. Through archival research into Shelley's personal journals and other writings, Hunt unearths Shelley's ruminations on her own personal experiences of loss, including the death of young children in her family to disease and the drowning of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley's grief drove her to intensive study of Greek tragedy, through which she developed the thinking about plague, conflict, and collective responsibility that later emerges in her fiction. From her readings of classic works of plague literature to her own translation of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, and from her authorship of the first major modern pandemic novel to her continued influence on contemporary popular culture, Shelley gave rise to a tradition of postapocalyptic thought that asks a question that the Covid-19 pandemic has made newly urgent for many: What do humans do after disaster?
Mary Shelley's enduring contribution stems perhaps from the legacy of her lesser-known novel, The Last Man (1826). Reading Shelley's fiction alongside her other writings, including her personal journals, Eileen M. Hunt reveals how Shelley gave rise to a tradition of postapocalyptic thought that asks: What do humans do after disaster?
About the Author
Eileen M. Hunt is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Artificial Life After Frankenstein and Mary Shelley and the Rights of the Child: Political Philosophy in "Frankenstein," both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Reviews
"The final installment of Eileen M. Hunt's magnificent trilogy of books about Mary Shelley, and the most profound. Studying The Last Man together with Shelley's tragic journals and her hitherto unknown translation of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, Hunt uncovers a searing account of catastrophe, suited to our times, but also a constructive project of facing the worst with love, hope, and connection to others. Shelley now takes her rightful place as a major, indeed heroic, voice in the history of political thought." * Martha C. Nussbaum, The University of Chicago *
"The First Last Man is compelling reading. Timely, thought provoking, and humane, it reframes Shelley's The Last Man for our moment and epitomizes a new kind of intellectual, literary, and political awareness about Shelley's work." * Maria Schoina, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece *
"Eileen M. Hunt wears her deep learning lightly to pace a scholarly narrative that itself often reads like a novel, informed by her own autobiography, finding companionship in Shelley's persistence through serial devastations to persevere with hope and purpose. The First Last Man is an unrivaled accomplishment of admirable scholarship and impassioned humanism." * Susan J. Wolfson, Princeton University *
Book Information
ISBN 9780812254020
Author Eileen M. Hunt
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press
Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press
