Narratologium · A living archive of stories
Explore how stories are built, how perspectives change them, and what their sources reveal.
What survives.
What changes.
At the reading table
Start with a passage from Frankenstein. Follow a voice, change your perspective, then see how the telling holds together.
Three voices. A story within a story.
Creature selected. Read the passage.
Creature / The voice inside Victor’s account
Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.
— Creature, speaking to Victor Frankenstein
Read Chapter 10 in the 1831 text ↗Passages are transcribed from Project Gutenberg eBook #84, using the 1831 text and chapter numbering. Walton: Letter 2; Victor: Chapter 5; Creature: Chapter 10. Whitespace is normalized. The original text is public domain in the United States.
Margin notes, questions, and connections are editorial readings, not quotations or measured findings. These are passages from different moments in the novel, selected to explore its nested voices.
Read the source text ↗Visit the source ledger →Find your way into the atlas
Begin with what makes you curious. Each entrance opens a different way to read.
Look beneath the plot. Follow its frames, its turning points, and the order in which a story lets you know.
Explore story structureA change of voice changes what comes into view. Study who speaks, who perceives, and what remains outside the frame.
Enter the perspective labFollow an interpretation back to its materials. Examine the sources, their context, and the gaps they leave behind.
Open the source ledgerA practice of close attention
A narrator chooses where to begin. A witness notices one detail and misses another. An ending changes how we remember everything before it. Narratologium makes these choices available to examine.
Move between the words on the page, an interpretation of their effect, and the source that lets you check the reading for yourself.
The working collection
Return to a familiar instrument, or take your question somewhere new.
Open a story and examine its working parts.
Trace chronology and telling order in the anatomy suite.
Read competing accounts alongside one another.
Explore how sequencing gives evidence meaning.
Read as a maker: investigate the choices behind the prose.
Consider the distance between intention and reception.
Explore the ideas, methods, and instruments behind the atlas.
