Frankenstein o del mostro innocente

This paper aims to offer an innovative reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by reflecting on the cultural horizon that influenced the composition of the novel, namely the Naturphilosophie of the Romantic period, characterized by the interpenetration of matter and spirit, visible and invisible. Its major development occurred in German aesthetics of the 18th century, where the union of sensibility and imagination was harmonically realized through a special fusion of philosophy and literature. Thanks to this encounter, philosophy regained its link with the universal and literature became capable of “telling” the invisible without falling into arbitrariness. From this theoretical perspective, the monster created by Shelley is not a creative failure, but something enormous (ungeheuer) that terrifies because it transcends both our sensitive faculty and our imaginative capacity. Monster is described here as the place of interaction between visible and invisible, which only the artist – by placing himself in the middle of this relationship – is able to narrate.