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Our understanding of Frankenstein changes once we devote more attention to the daemon's claim that he discovered all of his reading materials in French translation. This essay begins by speculating about the possibility that the daemon has read Anne-Marie du Bocage's 1748 Le paradis terrestre, poéme imité de Milton. This speculation establishes the grounds for revisiting existing accounts of Shelley's relationship to Miltonic precedent. This essay argues that the fictive presence of translation in Frankenstein signals to the reader some specific strategies that Shelley had discerned in her study of Paradise Lost. By promoting heightened skepticism about understanding based on visual perception, Milton's poem deflects analogous skepticism about the truthfulness of verbal transmission across languages. In Frankenstein , Shelley subsequently adapts these poetic techniques, not to inspire faith in her prose fiction but instead to invite the reader to suspend disbelief. Shelley revises Miltonic precedent to promote the readers' sense that, explicit claims about mediation and translation notwithstanding, we have heard the daemon's story in his own words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]