21L.476 Romantic Poetry, Spring 2005

When Shelley's Frankenstein was published, the word galvanism implied the release, through electricity of mysterious life forces. As this 1836 political cartoon of a "galvanized" corpse suggests, electricity had the seeming ability to stir the dead to life. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-119166 (b&w film copy neg.)])