When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.
Literature, Philosophy, and Mythology
- John Milton, Paradise Lost; "Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay/To mould me Man, did I solicit thee/From darkness to promote me?" (Epigraph, 10.9, 15.3); the monster reads it at De Lacey's cottage
- Plutarch: Lives (15.3)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Sorrows of Werter
(15.3) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner " (5.8)
- Dante (5.4)
- The myth of Prometheus: (Title, 16.1)
- Constantin-Francois Volney: Ruins of Empires (13.14)
Historical Figures
- Dr. Darwin, not Charles, but his grandfather (The author's preface)
- Cornelius Agrippa (2.10)
- Paracelsus (2.10)
- Albertus Magnus (2.10)
- Luigi Galvin (2.10)