〈倒立〉した「崇高」とその怪物性

―『フランケンシュタイン』におけるゴシック・ファンタジー―

抄録

In eighteenth-century Britain the sublime as an aesthetic category was discussed and appreciated in order to encourage a masculine, 'great and noble' mind. It was applied to literature, picture and natural scenery, and was accepted enthusiastically. In 1818 Mary Shelley published her Gothic novel Frankenstein, which can be interpreted as a kind of parody on the popular discourse of the sublime. Here we can find the transformation of the sublime in two ways: first, into a grandiose void without any profound meaning and second, into its grotesque parallel, that is, the negative sublime. The story is apparently a sublime adventure and tragedy of a young man who tried to create a human being. But the satanic figure of the creature offers a new aspect of the sublime, emphasizing its ugliness and terrific violence. The figure of the monster reflects the mass of something to be differentiated and excluded, something like the shadow of 'man of taste' or 'standard of taste' itself. Alluding to the negative sublimity of the dreadful monster, the story seems to show that the aesthetic principles, such as 'disinterestedness', were established on violent differentiation and exclusion. Thus we can regard the creature in Frankenstein as the reverse image produced in the eighteenth-century discourse on the 'aesthetic'.