allusion (n.)
[uh-loo-zhuh n]
1) a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication
Title Page Epigraph
John Milton's Paradise Lost is quoted by Dr. Frankenstein
"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?"
Chapter 2
Frankenstein mentions Cornelius Agrippa, who was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist.
"In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm."
He also mentions Paracelsus, a Swiss German physician and alchemist, and Albertus Magnus, a Catholic saint.
"When I returned home, my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few beside myself."
Chapter 4
Sinbad during the "Fourth Voyage of Sinbad" in The Arabian Nights was mentioned.
"I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light."
Chapter 5
a stanza from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was used.
"Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth Close behind him tread."
Frankenstein quotes the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield.
"… I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield 'I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.' But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge."
Italian Poet Dante Alighieri was mentioned
"I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived."
Chapter 10
Frankenstein quotes a few lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mutability.
"We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wandering thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow. Nought may endure but mutability!"