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This article attempts to delineate the history of the monstruos by recognizing inside it the manifestation of severance between the contingent and the trascendent world. The monster embodies the boundary of the everlasting paradox of human existence, in the balance between the desire of knowing and the impossibility of drawing completely on knowledge.
International Journal of Research , 2022
Since earliest times monsters have awed, terrified and enthralled us, and they have figured in the myths, stories, poetry and prose of numerous cultures down the ages. There are thousands of poems and passages about them in Classical (i.e. ancient Greek and Latin) literature, ranging all the way from the horrific to the humorous. Finding stories about these creatures which are highly entertaining in themselves, we acquire a basic grounding in literary criticism which will enable us to read narratives about monsters with more perception and more enjoyment. The depiction of monsters and fascinating creatures in literature reveals a lot about the cultures that produce them. The fact that there were so many Classical monsters makes it clear that they filled a need for the Greeks and Romans, for example by providing a safe thrill and scare. They show us what the ancients feared and also found fascinating, what worried them, and what was felt to be good and normal. They give us insights into a view of the human situation-the trials and horrors of life, and how they overcome the terrifying powers of wild nature.
2015
For centuries the cycle of feminine rejection and discrimination has plagued numerous societies. Maryse Conde and Mary Shelley both imitated this phenomenon within their novels, through their use of the male engineered notion of the angel or monster mask. These masks place women into two polarized groups and they are used for the shrouding of various aspects of the woman’s personality. Monster! Angel! The monster /angel archetypes have long been a topic for discussion in literature. The stereotype of the Angel of the house was derived from Coventry Patmore’s narrative poem, Angel of the House and it represents the passive, subservient, selfless woman who the phallocentric society deems as the ideal woman. Conversely, the monster archetype was derived from the icon Medusa in Greek mythology. The phallocratic society of the eighteenth century manipulated this image to symbolise the aspects of a woman’s personality that defies the rigid ideals of the angel in the house archetype. According to professors Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the male phallocracy produced these dichotomous “masks” to lessen their fear of the “inconsistency” of the woman; their creation of these masks constrains the expression of the woman and “kills her into art” (596). Mary Shelly and Maryse Conde - in their novels The Modern Prometheus or Frankenstein written in 1818 and I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem written in 1986, respectively - both implicitly address the issue of society’s stereotyping and rejection of certain aspects the woman. Although these writers wrote their novels over one hundred years apart, they both manage to capture different stages in the perpetual cycle of societal rejection. Shelley creates a monster to illustrate her perception of the monster archetype, while Conde permits the society to label her protagonist as a monster in order to satirise the principles of the white male dominated society. The monster image gains manifestation by means of the literary conventions of the gothic and magical realism. Thus, it is evidenced that through the conventions of the gothic and codes of magic realism, societal rejection facilitates the embodiment and manifestation of the monster image.
Monsters: Classic to Contemporary Symbols
Culture, Society and Praxis, 2008
This paper reviews different literatures that use Monster's as methods to strike fear within the reader, and the characters in the story itself. Popular childhood monster stories are explored in terms of the monsters role in the story, and the monsters method of engaging fear into certain characters. The author poses personal questions for our readers; such as: what if you engaged in thoughts that could potentially deem you as a monster?
Monsters and the Monstrous: Ancient Expressions of Cultural Anxieties
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity, 2021
Many of the most recognizable monsters in Western culture, such as Medusa, Cerberus, and the Cyclopes, started to appear in literature and art nearly three thousand years ago. Other, more generic types of monstrous or uncanny entities, such as dragons and ghosts, are even older and appear in art and literature across the globe. This chapter covers such creatures in the earliest folk and fairy tales of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean areas, keeping in mind that much of our information comes from tales, or, in most cases, prototypes for tales, embedded within the larger context of Near Eastern and Greek myths. The chapter first considers what the concept of "monster" might have meant for people in those geographical regions thousands of years ago. The chapter then examines what tales from antiquity survive that incorporated monsters, what kinds of monster predominate in these tales, and what the presence and roles of monsters in the tales might have meant.