"The horror of that countenance" from Frankenstein to Duckenstein

GUGLIELMI, MARINA NELLA

2016-01-01

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Abstract

The masterpieces of Western literature survive today in translations, adaptations, and rewritings. The examples to which I am referring to are taken from publications of Italian Disney, that from 1935 has been made autonomous from US production and has given birth to the Italian Disney. Especially since the early two thousands, comic parodies of the masterpieces of world literature have often subverted, thanks to irony, the canon of Disney characters and have them come more closer and closer to the leading role of graphic novels protagonists. In this paper I focus particularly on Duckenstein (2016), the parody that made Enna and Celoni, inspired by Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818). The face of the monster created by the scientist Frankenstein is a visual and narrative device that is decisive in the novel. From James Whale’s adaptation (1931) the monster mask will be imitated and reproduced in a large number of works from Frankenstein including Disney parody.