| This course explores images of monsters, monstrosity, and the grotesque in literary texts from various periods. It proceeds from the premise that monsters and grotesque bodies offer radical images of the "other" and that our fascination with these assemblages of familiar parts into unfamiliar wholes speaks to human anxieties and confusions regarding identity, boundaries, security, and sexuality. Discover how the at-once attractive and repulsive images of monstrosity and the grotesque playfully "embody" the ambivalence of the cultures that produce them. Using insights drawn from various cultural and intellectual traditions, we consider how literature employs monstrous and grotesque images to imaginatively address human problems. |
