Making the Monster: Magic, Medicine, and Murder

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Monsters manifest in the earliest manuscripts containing English literature and continue to capture our collective imagination. Cultural conceptions of monsters may change over time, but monstrous entities never cease to appear in the writings of any given era. These creatures shapeshift from magical beasts to medical inventions to ravenous murderers across the centuries, and their depictions resonate differently depending on the historical context. This course explores monsters and monstrosity in British literature from the medieval period to the modern age. It not only investigates how monsters are represented but also interrogates the underlying anxieties that define their textual presence. What constitutes monstrosity? By what means are monsters created? In what ways do monsters reflect and reveal our deepest fears? What do we fear and why do we fear it?