The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous
Author: Asa Simon Mittman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 600
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351894323

The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.

Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry

Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry
Author: Dunstan Lowe
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2015-04-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472119516

An important contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of monster studies

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous
Author: Asa Simon Mittman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351894315

The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.

Monsters in Greek Literature

Monsters in Greek Literature
Author: Fiona Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000392597

Monsters in Greek literature are often thought of as creatures which exist in mythological narratives, however, as this book shows, they appear in a much broader range of ancient sources and are used in creation narratives, ethnographic texts, and biology to explore the limits of the human body and of the human world. This book provides an in-depth examination of the role of monstrosity in ancient Greek literature. In the past, monsters in this context have largely been treated as unimportant or analysed on an individual basis. By focusing on genres rather than single creatures, the book provides a greater understanding of how monstrosity and abnormal bodies are used in ancient sources. Very often ideas about monstrosity are used as a contrast against which to examine the nature of what it is to be human, both physically and behaviourally. This book focuses on creation narratives, ethnographic writing, and biological texts. These three genres address the origins of the human world, its spatial limits, and the nature of the human body; by examining monstrosity in these genres we can see the ways in which Greek texts construct the space and time in which people exist and the nature of our bodies. This book is aimed primarily at scholars and students undertaking research, not only those with an interest in monstrosity, but also scholars exploring cultural representations of time (especially the primordial and mythological past), ancient geography and ethnography, and ancient philosophy and science. As the representation of monsters in antiquity was strongly influential on medieval, renaissance, and early modern images and texts, this book will also be relevant to people researching these areas.

Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 0192650459

Imagining Monstrosity

Imagining Monstrosity
Author: Jennifer Rose Matthews
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2015
Genre: Art, Greek
ISBN:

The ancient Greeks possessed a mythology that was populated by monsters who functioned as signifiers of some of their most closely held anxieties. Monstrosity is used here as a way to access the incorporeal culture of the ancient Greeks. The positioning of monsters as part of a collective tradition meant that they existed in, and impacted, every level of culture, anywhere that stories were told. The main purpose of this Thesis is to explore the ways in which the ancient Greeks represented monsters within their art and literature, from the archaic age to the Hellenistic period, as expressions of their anxieties and fears, particularly relating to gender. The monsters examined range along a mythical chronology, from the primordial era to a heroic age. Primordial monsters, it will be argued, existed as expressions of a feminine tainted chaos, designed in opposition to the masculine rationality of the Olympian order. They were an imagined challenge to a cosmological system that was the conceptual basis for the ordering of ancient Greek human society. The monsters of the heroic age, however, related to the human in even more obvious ways. Heroic-era female monsters were constructed using a series of closely related chthonic concepts, which cast them as aberrant and polluted. The traits used to create these feminine monsters it will be argued were reflections of the Greek understanding of the feminine as 'other'. In contrast the heroic-era masculine will be shown to be the most innocuous discussed. They, like the feminine are reflective of an 'other,' but this 'other' was the barbarian or Wildman; both of which possessed a greater conceptual distance from the male subject than the female within his home. Ultimately, it will be demonstrated that monsters offer a useful avenue into the anxiety-provoking issues of ancient Greek culture and the perceptions of gender that so often fuelled them.

Women and Other Monsters

Women and Other Monsters
Author: Jess Zimmerman
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807054933

A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of feminism The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds—who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough—aren’t just outside the norm. They’re unnatural. Monstrous. But maybe, the traits we’ve been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths. Through fresh analysis of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx, Jess Zimmerman takes us on an illuminating feminist journey through mythology. She guides women (and others) to reexamine their relationships with traits like hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, teaching readers to embrace a new image of the female hero: one that looks a lot like a monster, with the agency and power to match. Often, women try to avoid the feeling of monstrousness, of being grotesquely alien, by tamping down those qualities that we’re told fall outside the bounds of natural femininity. But monsters also get to do what other female characters—damsels, love interests, and even most heroines—do not. Monsters get to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Today, women are becoming increasingly aware of the ways rules and socially constructed expectations have diminished us. After seeing where compliance gets us—harassed, shut out, and ruled by predators—women have never been more ready to become repellent, fearsome, and ravenous.

Monstrosity and Philosophy

Monstrosity and Philosophy
Author: Filippo Del Lucchese
Publisher:
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2019
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781474456234

Amazons and giants, snakes and gorgons, centaurs and gryphons: monsters abounded in the ancient world. Del Lucchese grapples with the concept of monstrosity, showing how ancient philosophers explored metaphysics, ontology, theology and politics to respond to the challenge of radical otherness in nature and in thought.