Golden, John

After 1815's eruption of Mount Tambora, the following period was named the "Year without a Summer" and experienced irregularly cold weather, failed crops, rampant disease, and riots. In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley met in the Alps and wrote "Darkness," "Mont Blanc," and Frankenstein respectively. This thesis focuses on these works' depictions of nature in light of how these features may have been impacted by the climate. It argues in Chapter One that the volcanic eruption caused global climate changes that affected these writers. In Chapter Two, it illustrates differences in nature's representation between first generation and second generation Romantic works. The conclusion synthesizes the arguments made in Chapters One and Two, suggesting that 1816's climate affected these writers in such a way as to produce an environment from which science fiction could emerge in Frankenstein.

The aim of this study is to reveal how LBD adheres to postmodern tenets while
also being ultimately suspicious of these principles. This suspicion of postmodern
principles is reflected in the interaction between the main subject of the videos, Lizzie
Bennet, and the audience. This examination invokes the questions of when, where, and
how the audience experiences LBD. This illuminates the manner in which LBD functions
as a postmodern literary text and how this text is critical of its digital composition.