On Monsters: A Comparative Study in Medieval Literature
Project no. 20265 · Status: Kapanmış (Yayın bekleniyor) · 2019
Summary
On Monsters: A Comparative Study in Medieval Literature Until J.R.R Tolkien’s seminal lecture in 1936 entitled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” monsters were not really that important in Medieval English Literature. Belonging to the oral literature tradition, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf was considered to be nothing more than a hodgepodge of randomly connected units, a poem of little importance. Tolkien in his lecture, defended the poem by stating that the three monsters found in Beowulf gave the poem coherence; and after this defence, a gradual change in attitude towards the reception of the Beowulf poem became visible. Sixty years later, in 1996, J.J. Cohen’s introductory article entitled “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” found in his edited collection Monster Theory not only gave the study of monsters a name but also expanded the perception of monsters by questioning the cultural phenomena underlying the image of the monster in seven theses. From this viewpoint, then, by expanding on Tolkien’s ideas and Cohen’s work this project analyses monsters found in medieval western literature (between the fifth and fifteenth centuries) by focusing on how monster imagery has shaped the medieval imagination. By analysing monster imagery in medieval texts, this study indicates how influential the monster image has been in aspects of contemporary culture, especially in the perception of the Other. Keywords: Medieval Literature, Monster, Monster Theory, Perception of the Other, Medieval Culture