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, of analogies with selective breeding, a new message created from an old consecrated text, of galvanic reanimation or the story of Frankenstein, brought to life by a lightening bolt of electricity. The relations between these metaphors and sacred narratives of resurrection, commonplace agricultural practice, the revision of consecrated texts and anxious responses to new technology give some indication
relevant to this chapter. A book may be renewed through transmission, infecting further texts which demonstrate its influence through allusion or imitation. Reanimation has a very clear reflexive force. Any retelling of Frankenstein , it could be argued, mimics the novel’s original dynamic when it brings the original back to life, usually deforming Shelley’s original conception in the process
characteristics of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. Although the central references used by the screenwriter (Richard/Rick) to explain the proximity of creativity and love are to Frankenstein and My Fair Lady – or more generally the myth of Pygmalion on which both are based – the process described also underlies Shakespeare’s genre
–137. 26 For a useful discussion of the novel’s debts to other Doppelgänger texts, such as Frankenstein , see N. Ruddick, ‘Reticence and Ostentation in Christopher Priest’s Later Novels: The Quiet Woman and The Prestige ’, in A. M. Butler (ed.), Christopher Priest: The Interaction (London: The Science Fiction Foundation, 2005 ), pp