Poetics of the Bedroom Scene in Fuseli, Frankenstein, Film

This essay explores Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781), its intermedial modes of transmission, and the intermedial poetics and reading practices it generates. The sensational power of The Nightmare generates further commissions in the areas of dreams, the gothic and the supernatural. The striking composition and open-ended potential of Fuseli’s nocturnal interior make it a schema that helps define and disseminate works. Its intermedial circulation also defines the narrative possibilities and the visual construction of the death-bed scene in Shelley’s Frankenstein, a scene often related to Fuseli’s picture mostly for its biographical import or its afterlife in filmic adaptations.