Frankenstein

From Nightmare of Reason to Mirror of Humanity:
The Eternal Return of Frankenstein
Featuring Over 200 Color Images and QR Codes

Born on a storm-torn night at Villa Diodati from the imagination of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is far more than a monster: he is the Modern Prometheus who never stops questioning us. For more than two centuries, his shadow has stretched across our fears, transforming literature's most tragic Creature into a universal myth.

This volume retraces the character's entire evolution - from his literary origins in 1818 to Guillermo del Toro's 2025 cinematic reinterpretation - revealing how each era has rewritten its own anxieties onto the monster's body.

A visual and narrative journey through every major chapter of the myth: from nineteenth-century theater to the classic Universal icon with Boris Karloff's bolts, from Hammer's blood-soaked Technicolor to Mel Brooks's masterful parody, all the way to the poetic and postmodern incarnations of Penny Dreadful and Poor Things. Through cinema, TV series, comics, merchandising, and the latest technological debates, the book explores the transmedia expansion of Frankenstein: sometimes a scientific warning, sometimes an icon of difference, sometimes a pop collectible, sometimes a metaphor for the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

From Theodor von Holst's engraving to Jack Pierce's legendary makeup, from the psychology of assembly to the aesthetics of rejection, Frankenstein - Anatomy of an Icon investigates the Creature's physicality, gaze, and grammar of the scar, demonstrating how that stitched-together body has become an indelible language: a mirror in which humanity continues to confront its own limits and its own hopes.

Visio Collection - Pop Icons Series
Visual explorations across art, architecture, fashion, cinema,
and the culture of images.

Intra
Books, eBooks, and Audiovisual Media, Between Innovation and Tradition
16 series, 350 authors, 900 titles in Italian, English, and Spanish
Global readability, Italian charm