The Metaphor of the Monster: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding the Monstrous Other in Literature

Description

The Metaphor of the Monster offers fresh perspectives and a variety of disciplinary approaches to the ever-broadening field of monster studies. The eclectic group of contributors to this volume represents areas of study not generally considered under the purview of monster studies, including world literature, classical studies, philosophy, ecocriticism, animal ethics, and gender studies. Combining historical overviews with contemporary and global outlooks, this volume recontextualizes the monstrous entities that have always haunted the human imagination in the age of the Anthropocene. It also invites reflection on new forms of monstrosity in an era epitomized by an unprecedented deluge of (mis)information. Uniting researchers from varied academic backgrounds in a common effort to challenge the monstrous labels that have historically been imposed upon "the Other," this book endeavors above all to bring the monster out of the shadows and into the light of moral consideration. Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction • Keith Moser Part I: Ecological Perspectives 1 A Portrait of Fictional Characters as Darwinian Monsters • Dominique Lestel 2 Tokyo Ghoul and the Trouble with Cannibalism • Tony Milligan 3 Monster and Victim: Melusine from the Fourteenth Century to the Age of Homo Detritus • Jonathan Krell 4 J. M. G. Le Clézio’s Defense of the Human and Other-than-human Victims of the Derridean “Monstrosity of the Unrecognizable” in the Mauritian Saga Alma • Keith Moser 5 Strange Fish: Caliban’s Sea-changes and the Problems of Classification • James Seth 6 Monster of Vacancy, Ghost of Culture, Instrument of Clarity: Cultural and Textual Analysis of the Function of the Sonoran Desert as Monster in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway • Mindy Adams Part II: Transgressive, Monstrous Gender and Corporality 7 Transgressive and Sovereign Authority in the Valois Court • Touba Ghadessi 8 “Maybe Something I Never Wanted Will Be Born”: Etgar Keret’s Monstrous Dream of Motherhood • Elisa Carandina Part III: Teaching Monstrosity in the (Post-)Modern World 9 Reading Monsters: How Mary Shelley Teaches Incels to Read Paradise Lost • Neil Barrett 10 “We Live in a Time of Monsters”: Teaching Composition through the Representations of Monsters and Monstrosity in Literature • Devon Pizzino Part IV: Monstrosity in World Literature 11 Vamping It Up: Identity Performance and Intoxicated Bloodlust in the Poetry of Eduardo Haro Ibars • Alyssa Holan 12 The Edges of the World in Classical Greece and Epic India: A Comparison of the Monstrous Races of Ctesias’s Indica and the Rākṣasas of Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa • Albert Watanabe 13 Satire and Monstrosity in African Diasporic Drama • Subbah Mir 14 How a Monster Became a Hero: An Understanding of Camusian Morality through the Absurdist Hero, Don Juan • Scott Truesdale Index