Carnivalesque Gothic and the Politics of Monstrosity: Mediocracy and Maternal Loss in Ahmad Tawfik’s The Legend of Frankenstein

This article examines how Ahmad Tawfik’s The Legend of Frankenstein (Arabic: Ust.ūrat Frankenstein ) appropriates Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic to construct a distinctly Egyptian version of the Carnivalesque Gothic. Tawfik transposes the tale of creator and creature into the landscape of postmodern Egypt, where monstrosity becomes a metaphor for the alienation, loss, and moral ambiguity shaping the contemporary youth experience. Through this relocation, the Gothic is stripped of its supernatural core and reconfigured to critique the socio-political mediocrity that dominates Egyptian public life. Central to Tawfik’s appropriation is the evocation of maternal loss, not only as a personal trauma, but also as a cultural and political rupture that haunts the post-revolutionary generation. The figure of the monster, divorced from its Shelleyan origins in science and Romantic ambition, becomes a grotesque product of a system in decay – part satire, part tragedy, and fully grounded in the failures of institutional authority. Tawfik’s use of carnivalesque motifs such as irony, parody, and grotesque realism revitalizes the Gothic mode, transforming it into a vehicle for cultural resistance and political critique. This study positions The Legend of Frankenstein as a landmark in the evolution of the contemporary Arab Gothic, arguing that Tawfik repurposes the genre not simply to retell a canonical Western text, but to articulate a politics of monstrosity rooted in Egyptian youth culture.