"Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance," Journal of the History of Ideas 75, 4 (2014): 521-43. (original) (raw)
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The Epistemological Functions of Monsters in the Middle Ages
Monsters in the Middle Ages assumed significant epistemological functions, providing an image of the complete 'other' in the human quest for the self. Since late antiquity teratology played a big role in literature, art, philosophy, and religion, but meaning and relevance of monsters changed from author to author (the same applies to their visual representation). This article provides an overview of how the image of the monster changed throughout times and how individual writers evaluated them.
The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and mon- sters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the mon- strous occurs not only in fictional travel narratives, but at the heart of construc- tions of the native hero as well as the Christian saint. In these constructions we read the central contradiction in this literature: the monster must be ‘other’ and yet cannot be absolutely so; on the contrary, the monster remains recognizable, familiar, seductive, and possible. In this essay, we discuss textual sources for the early medieval monstrous, sources ranging from Pliny to Augustine and Isidore. As we survey early medieval texts dealing with the monstrous in genres including catalog, epic, and hagiography as well as visual depictions in manuscript illustration and the mappaemundi, we consider historically particular cultural and political motivations for the representation of the monstrous in these texts, among them the early Christian conversions and shifting national boundaries.
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.
From mythical monsters to future horrors: towards an understanding of the function of monstrosity:
This BA thesis investigates the function of the Monster from the 5th century onwards, with particular attention to whether, and how, this function has changed over time. To this purpose, three texts are analyzed: 'Beowulf', 'The Island of Doctor Morreau' and 'The Calcutta Chromosome', with a narrow focus on how the monsters in the chosen texts function and are described. Anthropological, philosophical, historical and literary approaches to the monster are outlined and to varying extents applied in the analysis of the individual texts. Subsequently, the texts are analyzed in chronological order, with particular emphasis on the function, description, and location of the monsters, with emphasis on the Monsters of 'The Calcutta Chromosome'. Subsequently, I undertake a comparative analysis of the monsters of 'Beowulf', 'The Island of Doctor Morreau' and 'The Calcutta Chromosome', this time focusing on the geographical location of the monsters, and its meaning. Finally, I attempt a theoretically founded analysis of how the monster functions in literature, with particular emphasis on its symbolic function. Here the theory that was explained in the opening chapter is drawn in, in an argument that the monster basically has different layers of functions. Furthermore, it is argued that the functions of the monster has various facets, symbolic and concrete, and that it refuses any clearcut definition. This is supported by McCormack's argument that the core feature of the monster is that it defies categorization. This is used to support the argument that the monster is fundamentally ambiguous. Throughout the thesis, it is argued that the monster is fundamentally a complex entity, and that any attempt to approach the monster from any one theoretical angle will be incapable of grasping this complexity. It is concluded that my thesis, that the monster has always resided beyond the border of what is known, but that this border has moved over time, is fundamentally correct. However, it is also concluded that this is but one aspect of the ambiguous nature of the monster. Furthermore, it is concluded that the monster is a fundamentally transgressive construct, and that the breaching of borders is one of the key functions of the monster. It is noted that general conclusions can only be drawn to a limited extent on the basis of the examined source material. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the purpose of this thesis is more to point to a general trend in the depiction of monstrosity across literary eras, than to make a definitive statement about the monster as a literary concept.