Sidney, Shelley (and Virgil)?

Sidney echoes Virgil (“happy is who is able to know the causes of things”) in claiming that some individuals’ thirst for knowledge is propelled by an understanding of “themselves to be demigods if they knew the causes of things” (260). This statement along with the rest of Sidney’s elucidation of his understanding of teaching, learning and practice is very relevant to the text of Frankenstein and Sidney’s “The Defense of Poesy”. Sidney posits that the end of learning is “to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying [of] his own divine essence” (260). Victor’s knowledge inverts this ideal; he creates a dungeon of a body for the imprisonment and eventual discontent of an incipient mind. Personally, Victor’s knowledge and its monstrous product cause him mortal terror, mental and emotional anguish and very real corporeal danger. What message might be extrapolated from Frankenstein concerning Sidney (and Virgil’s) understanding of knowledge, learning and the whole idea of “divine essence? How do Sidney’s conclusions affirm or contradict the variety of ways Frankenstein treats the body/soul binary?