Penny Dreadful (2014-present) makes use of both plots and characters taken from well-know terror and fantastic fictions. This series created by John Logan settles these elements within the agitated ...Nineteenth Century London city; at the same time, the show mixes these elements and configures its own discourse about the «monstrosity» of its characters. By means of this rewriting, the series produces a series of reflections on human condition and monsters’ condition. As it is stablished in the second season of the show after rewriting the myth of Pandora, the distinction between monsters and humans seems to be suspended and a place for a particular conception of monstrosity is produced. In this article we analyze the representations of monstrosity and identities in Penny Dreadful . To this aim we will pay special attention to characters and their interactions during first and second seasons, as well as the relationship between the series and its literary sources
From vampires and demons to ghosts and zombies, interest in monsters in literature, film, and popular culture has never been stronger. This concise Encyclopedia provides scholars and students with a ...comprehensive and authoritative A-Z of monsters throughout the ages. It is the first major reference book on monsters for the scholarly market. Over 200 entries written by experts in the field are accompanied by an overview introduction by the editor. Generic entries such as 'ghost' and 'vampire' are cross-listed with important specific manifestations of that monster. In addition to monsters appearing in English-language literature and film, the Encyclopedia also includes significant monsters in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African and Middle Eastern traditions. Alphabetically organized, the entries each feature suggestions for further reading. The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters is an invaluable resource for all students and scholars and an essential addition to library reference shelves.
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is Professor of English and Graduate Program Coordinator at Central Michigan University. He has published widely on monsters and the monstrous and is the author or editor of fourteen books including The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema (2012), Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (2008), Spectral America: Phantoms and the American Imagination (2004), and three volumes of the fiction of American horror author H.P. Lovecraft.
Contents: List of entries; Introduction; A-Z: The Monsters.
For every generic type of monster—ghost, demon, vampire, dragon—there are countless locally specific manifestations, with their own names, traits, and appearances. Such monsters populate all corners ...of the globe haunting their humans wherever they live. Living with Monsters is a collection of fourteen short pieces of ethnographic fiction (and a more academically inclined introduction and afterword) presenting a playful, spirited, and engaging look at how people live with their respective monsters around the world. They focus on the nitty-gritty dos and don’ts of how to placate spirits in India; how to domesticate Georgian goblins, how to live with aliens, how to avoid being taken by Anito in Taiwan, while simultaneously illuminating the politics of monster–human relations. In this collection, anthropologists working in fieldsites as diverse as the urban Ghana, the rural US, remote Aboriginal Australia, and the internet present imaginative accounts that demonstrate how thinking with monsters encourages people to contemplate difference, to understand inequality, and to see the world from new angles. Combine monsters with experimental ethnography, and the result is a volume that crackles with creative energy, flouts traditions of ethnographic writing, and pushes anthropology into new terrains.
A collection of scholarship on monsters and their meaning-across genres, disciplines, methodologies, and time-from foundational texts to the most recent contributions
Zombies and vampires, banshees ...and basilisks, demons and wendigos, goblins, gorgons, golems, and ghosts. From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our day, monsters have haunted the human imagination, giving shape to the fears and desires of their time. And as long as there have been monsters, there have been attempts to make sense of them, to explain where they come from and what they mean. This book collects the best of what contemporary scholars have to say on the subject, in the process creating a map of the monstrous across the vast and complex terrain of the human psyche.
Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock prepares the way with a genealogy of monster theory, traveling from the earliest explanations of monsters through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies, to the development of monster theory per se-and including Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's foundational essay "Monster Theory (Seven Theses)," reproduced here in its entirety. There follow sections devoted to the terminology and concepts used in talking about monstrosity; the relevance of race, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and physical appearance; the application of monster theory to contemporary cultural concerns such as ecology, religion, and terrorism; and finally the possibilities monsters present for envisioning a different future.
Including the most interesting and important proponents of monster theory and its progenitors, from Sigmund Freud to Julia Kristeva to J. Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Barbara Creed, and Stephen T. Asma-as well as harder-to-find contributions such as Robin Wood's and Masahiro Mori's-this is the most extensive and comprehensive collection of scholarship on monsters and monstrosity across disciplines and methods ever to be assembled and will serve as an invaluable resource for students of the uncanny in all its guises.
Contributors: Stephen T. Asma, Columbia College Chicago; Timothy K. Beal, Case Western Reserve U; Harry Benshoff, U of North Texas; Bettina Bildhauer, U of St. Andrews; Noel Carroll, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Arizona State U; Barbara Creed, U of Melbourne; Michael Dylan Foster, UC Davis; Sigmund Freud; Elizabeth Grosz, Duke U; J. Halberstam, Columbia U; Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz; Julia Kristeva, Paris Diderot U; Anthony Lioi, The Julliard School; Patricia MacCormack, Anglia Ruskin U; Masahiro Mori; Annalee Newitz; Jasbir K. Puar, Rutgers U; Amit A. Rai, Queen Mary U of London; Margrit Shildrick, Stockholm U; Jon Stratton, U of South Australia; Erin Suzuki, UC San Diego; Robin Wood, York U; Alexa Wright, U of Westminster.
In this review, I offer a critical summary of Adriana López-Labourdette's recent monograph El retorno del monstruo. Figuraciones de lo monstruoso en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea. As ...emerges from a first reading of the title, the volume deals with the appearance of monstrous figurations in the recent Latin American literary field. In addition to illustrating the main aspects addressed in the book, this review aims to demonstrate the relevance of such a study in the field of monster studies, both in the Latin American field and in literature in general. In particular, in addition to offering a complex theoretical apparatus and an exhaustive survey of the literature related to the theme of the monster, the author also provides numerous new insights through which to read and interpret the monstrous figurations that haunt contemporary literature.
This volume and its companion gather a wide range of readings and sources to enable us to see and understand what monsters show us about what it means to be human. Classic Readings on Monster ...Theoryintroduces the most important and influential modern theorists of the monstrous.
This text addresses a simple question: why were the Anglo-Saxons obsessed with monsters, many of which did not exist? Drawing on literature and art, theology, and a wealth of firsthand evidence, ...'Basilisks and Beowulf' reveals a people huddled at the edge of the known map, using the fantastic and the grotesque as a way of understanding the world around them and their place within it.
PDF
