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Invoking The Incubus: Mary Shelly's Use Of The Demon-Lover Tradition In Frankenstein, Christopher M. Lamphear

ETD Archive

The image and behavior of Shelley's infamous creature is similar to that of the mythical Incubus demon. By presenting Victor's hideous progeny as a reproduction of the Incubus myth, Shelley seems to provide her nineteenth-century reader with the image of demons, who for many, already haunted their nightmares. Shelley would likely have been familiar with the Incubus myth. Her fascination with her dead mother led her to the artist Henry Fuseli, whose painting "The Nightmare" depicts the Incubus Demon. Shelley wrote during a time in which medical scholars such as Dr. Bond and Dr. Waller explored a malady that they …