Profs & Pints Napa: Frankenstein, Knowledge, and Forgiveness

Profs and Pints Napa presents: “Frankenstein, Knowledge, and Forgiveness,” on the deeper meaning of Mary Shelley’s widely retold tale, with Kim Hester Williams, professor of literature at Sonoma State University and scholar of the American Gothic and Horror in literature and film.

[Tickets available only online, at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/napa-frankenstein .]

Mary Shelley's classic novel, Frankenstein, ranks as one of the most famous Gothic and Horror novels of all time, and now is experiencing a resurgence of interest as a result of famed director Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation of it.

Since its publication in 1818, debate has swirled around the question of what exactly Frankenstein represented to its author. Was it Shelley’s response to the works of her famous husband, Percy Shelley? A public conversation between her and her also-famous mother, Mary Wollstonecraft? An argument with John Milton's crucial text, Paradise Lost?

Hear such questions tackled, and gain a much richer appreciation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale and subsequent retellings, with Kim Hester Williams, who teaches the novel to college students and in October gave an outstanding Profs and Pints talk on Horror as a genre.

She’ll discuss how the new Frankenstein film fits in with Mary Shelley’s various ruminations on love, loss, and knowledge—gone awry. We’ll look at what the author had to say about the human frailties that hold us back from forming deeper relations with one another and living according to our higher virtues.

We’ll examine how Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro in her footsteps, press audiences on these simple questions: When will humans ever learn to love and to forgive? Or to forgive and then to truly love? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 and the talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: A publicity still from the 1931 film version of Frankenstein (Wikimedia Commons).