De doctores y monstruos: la ciencia como transgresión en Dr. Faustus, Frankestein y Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Abstract

This article, setting out from the idea that science has very often been a fundamental concern of literature, of which several examples are given, explores the relationship between the literary and the scientific realms, which becomes especially intense in the extreme, tragical cases of scientific transgression. This latter is analysed here in the concrete cases of three emblematic works of English literature belonging to different historical periods: Dr. Faustus, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Each of the heroes is a scientist, a doctor, in his own way, and each of them, impelled by an overwhelming scientific passion, trespasses on moral, religious and social limits imposed on them as men and as doctors. Their actions, or their very selves become monstruous in the course of their transgression, which brings punishment and tragedy. But the quest of these doctors, as literature has proven throughout the centuries, and as it has been my intention to explain, continues to be that of science today: it is particularly at the very core of medical debate nowadays, when questions such as genetic engineering awaken both in scientist and people in general all sorts of expectations, misgivings, fears and hopes.