Monster Theory
Subtitle: Reading Culture
Contributors: Mary Baine Campbell; David L. Clark; Frank Grady; David A. Hedrich Hirsch; Lawrence D. Kritzman; Kathleen Perry Long; Stephen Pender; Allison Pingree; Anne Lake Prescott; John O'Neill; William Sayers; Michael Uebel; Ruth Waterhouse
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: November 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 311
ISBN-13: 9780816628544
Subjects: Anthropology; Literary studies: general; Literary theory; Special Subjects In Literature; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Literary Criticism; General; Grotesque in literature; Abnormalities, Human, in literature; Monsters in literature
Description: Explores concepts of monstrosity in Western civilization from Beowulf to Jurassic Park.

We live in a time of monsters. Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argue the essays in this wide-ranging and fascinating collection that asks the question, What happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture?

In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

From http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/C/cohen_monster.html
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