Disgust and desire : the paradox of the monster /

Disgust and desire : the paradox of the monster /

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Bibliographic Details
Imprint:Leiden : Brill Rodopi, [2018]
©2018
Description:xii, 188 pages ; 24 cm.
Language:English
Series:At the Interface/Probing the Boundaries, 1570-7113 ; volume 91
At the interface/probing the boundaries ; v. 91.
Subject:
Monsters in literature.
Monsters in literature.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11458271
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:Wright, Kristen. editor
ISBN:9789004350731
900435073X
Notes:Includes bibliographical references.
Summary:"Monsters have taken many forms across time and cultures, yet within these variations, monsters often evoke the same paradoxical response: disgust and desire. We simultaneously fear monsters and take pleasure in seeing them, and their role in human culture helps to explain this apparent contradiction. Monsters are created in order to delineate where the acceptable boundaries of action and emotion exist. However, while killing the monster allows us to cast out socially unacceptable desires, the prevalence of monsters in both history and fiction reveals humanity's desire to see and experience the forbidden. We seek, write about, and display monsters as both a warning and wish fulfilment, and monsters, therefore, reveal that the line between desire and disgust is often thin. Looking across genres, subjects, and periods, this book examines what our conflicted reaction to the monster tells us about human culture."--Back cover.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Part I. Searching for Monsters
  • How Ignorance Made a Monster, Or: Writing the History of Vlad the Impaler without the Use of Sources Leads to 20,000 Impaled Turks
  • Unveiling the Truth through Testimony: The Argentinean Dirty War
  • Fanatics and Absolutists: Communist Monsters in John le Carré's Cold War Fiction
  • Part II. Desiring the Monstrous
  • Queer Race Play: Kinky Sex and the Trauma of Racism
  • Absolute Beasts? Social Mechanics of Achieved Monstrosity
  • Part III. Writing Monsters
  • Utopian Leprosy: Transforming Gender in Bram Stoker's Dracula and History in the Strugatsky Brothers' The Ugly Swans
  • Monstrosity and the Fantastic: The Threats and Promises of Monsters in Tommaso Landolfi's Fiction
  • Part IV. Gazing at Monsters
  • 'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': Man's Monstrous Potential in The Tempest and Titus
  • Paedophilic Productions and Gothic Performances: Contending with Monstrous Identity
  • Creeper Bogeyman: Cultural Narratives of Gay as Monstrous
  • Full Metal Abs: The Obscene Spartan Supplement of Liberal Democracy

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