ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that comparative anatomy offers an understanding of monstrous or anomalous generation which may help to illuminate the complex generative relationship between Frankenstein and his creature, as well as Shelley's own authorial connection to her novel – her 'hideous progeny'. She not only trace the historical links between the French and English currents of comparative anatomy and its reception in Mary Shelley's circle of friends, but also explore the resonances that might be established between the science of teratology and Shelley's vision of the monstrous. The science of teratology grew out of the French tradition of comparative anatomy in the early nineteenth century and was soon imported to England and Scotland by medical students who had studied under the French physiologists. The prehistory of Frankenstein's monster is comparable to that of the teratological specimen. The monster came to signal the full spectrum of nature's ontogenetic powers.
