The Monster in the Garden

The Monster in the Garden

Author: Luke Morgan

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0812247558

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In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan develops a new conceptual model of Renaissance landscape design, arguing that the monster was a key figure in Renaissance culture and that the incorporation of the monstrous into gardens was not incidental but an essential feature.


Monstrous Nature

Monstrous Nature

Author: Robin L. Murray

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2016-10-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0803285698

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5. Zombie Evolution: A New World with or without Humans -- 6. Laughter and the Eco-horror Film: The Troma Solution -- 7. Parasite Evolution in the Eco- horror Film: When the Host Becomes the Monster -- PART 4: Gendered Landscapes and Monstrous Bodies -- 8. Gendering the Cannibal: Bodies and Landscapesin Feminist Cannibal Movies -- 9. American Mary and Body Modification: Nature and the Art of Change -- Conclusion: Monstrous Nature and the New Cli-Fi Cinema -- Filmography -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index


Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet

Author: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2017-05-30

Total Pages: 734

ISBN-13: 1452954496

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Living on a damaged planet challenges who we are and where we live. This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth. As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch. Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.


The Monstrous Middle Ages

The Monstrous Middle Ages

Author: Bettina Bildhauer

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780802086679

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The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to issues of moral, theological, and cultural value. Monstrosity is bound up with questions of body image and deformity, nature and knowledge, hybridity and horror. To explore a culture's attitudes to the monstrous is to comprehend one of its most important symbolic tools. The Monstrous Middle Ages looks at both the representation of literal monsters and the consumption and exploitation of monstrous metaphors in a wide variety of high and late-medieval cultural productions, from travel writings and mystical texts to sermons, manuscript illuminations and maps. Individual essays explore the ways in which monstrosity shaped the construction of gender and sexual identity, religious symbolism, and social prejudice in the Middle Ages. Reading the Middle Ages through its monsters provides an opportunity to view medieval culture from fresh perspectives. The Monstrous Middle Ages will be essential reading for anyone interested in the concept of monstrosity and its significance for both medieval cultural production and contemporary critical practice.


Dimensions of Monstrosity in Contemporary Narratives

Dimensions of Monstrosity in Contemporary Narratives

Author: A. Ng

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2004-09-14

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0230502989

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Interweaving psychoanalysis, gender and cultural studies, and postmodern theories of geopolitics, this study of the monster in contemporary narratives demonstrates that the monster (and monstrosity) is largely a cultural and ideological production. Figures such as the serial-killer, the monstrous child, deformed bodies and spatially-influenced monstrosity will be considered through analyses of texts by Peter Ackroyd, Bret Easton Ellis, and Angela Carter (among others). The conclusion proposes that language itself becomes monstrous when it attempts, and fails, to articulate the monster.


The Forest and the EcoGothic

The Forest and the EcoGothic

Author: Elizabeth Parker

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-13

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 3030351548

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This book offers the first full length study on the pervasive archetype of The Gothic Forest in Western culture. The idea of the forest as deep, dark, and dangerous has an extensive history and continues to resonate throughout contemporary popular culture. The Forest and the EcoGothic examines both why we fear the forest and how exactly these fears manifest in our stories. It draws on and furthers the nascent field of the ecoGothic, which seeks to explore the intersections between ecocriticism and Gothic studies. In the age of the Anthropocene, this work importantly interrogates our relationship to and understandings of the more-than-human world. This work introduces the trope of the Gothic forest, as well as important critical contexts for its discussion, and examines the three main ways in which this trope manifests: as a living, animated threat; as a traditional habitat for monsters; and as a dangerous site for human settlement. This book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in horror and the Gothic, ecohorror and the ecoGothic, environmentalism, ecocriticism, and popular culture more broadly. The accessibility of the subject of ‘The Deep Dark Woods’, coupled with increasingly mainstream interests in interactions between humanity and nature, means this work will also be of keen interest to the general public.


Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History

Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History

Author: Iris Idelson-Shein

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1350052167

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This is the first study of monstrosity in Jewish history from the Middle Ages to modernity. Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, it examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture. Jews have occupied a liminal position within European society and culture, being deeply immersed yet outsiders to it. For this reason, they were perceived in terms of otherness and were often represented as monstrous beings. However, at the same time, European Jews invoked, with tantalizing ubiquity, images of magical, terrifying and hybrid beings in their texts, art and folktales. These images were used by Jewish authors and artists to push back against their own identification as monstrous or diabolical and to tackle concerns about religious persecution, assimilation and acculturation, gender and sexuality, science and technology and the rise of antisemitism. Bringing together an impressive cast of contributors from around the world, this fascinating volume is an invaluable resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in Jewish studies, as well as the history of monsters.