"Monsters in novels were connected with the protagonist, representative of a character's personal failings and failings of society. Film adaptations depict the creatures as engaging in senseless violence, suggesting a fear of the uncontrollable. This dichotomy is analyzed throug…
"Monsters in novels were connected with the protagonist, representative of a character's personal failings and failings of society. Film adaptations depict the creatures as engaging in senseless violence, suggesting a fear of the uncontrollable. This dichotomy is analyzed throug…
"During the crusades, Ethiopians, Jews, Muslims, and Mongols were branded enemies of the Christian majority. Illustrated with strikingly imaginative and still disturbing images, this book reveals the outrageously pejorative ways these rejected social groups were represented--oft…
Of giants: sex, monsters, and the Middle Ages
Monsters abound in Old and Middle English literature, from Grendel and his mother in Beowulf to those found in medieval romances such as Sir Gowther. Through a close examination of the way in which their bodies are sexed and gendered, and drawing from postmodern theories of gend…
Case studies of Wonders of the East, Beowulf, Mandeville's Travels, the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Gowther reveal a shift in attitudes toward the gendered and sexed body, and thus toward identity, between the two periods: while Old English authors and artists respond to …
