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Discerninghearts.com presents The Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pierce.

He is the co-editor of the St. Austen Review and has hosted two series on Shakespeare for EWTN,

as well as hosting several EWTN productions on J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Great Works in Western Literature with Joseph Pierce. I'm your host, Chris

McGregor. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the most influential and controversial novels of

the 19th century, but also has become one of the most misunderstood and

misinterpreted. It has been vivisected critically by later day Victor Frankenstein's, who

have transformed the meanings emerging from the novel into monsters of postmodern misconception.

Rather than understanding Frankenstein and his monsters through the lens of tradition,

the moderns have seized upon the book and carried off its bits to construct their own particular boogeyman.

Seldom has a work of fiction suffered so scandalously from the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism.

We now begin our discussion on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein.

Welcome, Joseph. It's good to be here.

Frankenstein. And it's author, Mary Shelley, many people do not know this very young girl who did an extraordinary work, and they really don't

know the work if they watch the movie.

No, as is often the case, of course, that if you're only engagement with Western literature

is through Hollywood, then you're not really engaging it at all, because with a very few

noble and honorable exceptions,

...