Asa Simon Mittman and Marcus Hensel, eds. Classic Readings on Monster Theory:
Demonstrare, Volume 1 and Primary
Sources on Monsters: Demonstrare, Volume 2. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press,
2018.
Reviewed by Melissa Ridley Elmes (MElmes@lindenwood.edu)
Monsters
and scholarship on monsters have received robust attention in the modern
university, with courses centered on or at least featuring teratological
subjects appearing in literature, language, Classics, History, Art History,
archaeology, and film, media, and cultural studies curricula, among others. And
of course, monsters have always been a source of interest and fascination for
the general popular culture audience in any given society. One of the
challenges of putting together such a course, or of entering into monster
studies as an independent researcher or enthusiast looking to know more, has
been gathering and collecting resources to teach and learn with; in the absence
of any single book devoted both to critical and scholarly materials and also to
primary sources such as literary texts and images, professors have historically
been required to develop their own “monster studies” coursepacks and
pedagogical materials, and students and enthusiasts, their own
reading/looking/watching lists, tasks made even more daunting by the inherently
interdisciplinary nature of the subject. In today’s university, where the
majority of professors are untenured and teaching increasing courseloads, the
time and effort required to pull together such materials can detain and derail
efforts to offer more coursework on monsters and monstrosity, even as their
importance and interest as subjects of critical study continue to increase. In
today’s society, where Googling “Monster” results in “About 1,120,000,000
results” as of the writing of this review, it’s difficult to know where to
start as an independent learner or where to continue as an aficionado. Enter
Asa Simon Mittman and Marcus Hensel with this two-volume set: Classic Readings on Monster Theory/
Demonstrare Volume 1, and Primary
sources on Monsters/ Demonstrare, Volume 2.
If
J.R.R. Tolkien and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen are the originators of the critical
field (and they are widely credited as so being) Asa Simon Mittman is the
Mensch of Monster Studies. Over nearly two decades of work he has collaborated
with countless other scholars on edited collections, museum exhibits,
conference programs and sessions, special issues of journals, and through his role
as co-founder and President of MEARCSTAPA, an international and
interdisciplinary society devoted to the study of monsters, offering
undergraduate and graduate students, emerging and junior scholars, and senior
scholars, alike, rich opportunities to enter into and make their own
contributions to the field. Mentor as much as master of the subject, Mittman’s
career goal of broadening the field (“total world monster studies domination,”
if you will) seems closer than ever to fruition with the appearance of these
books, designed as a set but readily employable as standalone volumes as well.
An Art History professor, Mittman has teamed up with Marcus Hensel, an expert
in Old English monsters and monstrosity, and an international roster of
scholars in Classics, languages and literatures, and history ranging in career
levels from graduate student to professor emeritus, to deliver a thoughtfully
collated and brilliantly conceived, inclusive, and interdisciplinary resource
that both communicates the history of the field and provides ample room to
explore and discover new avenues of study within the selected primary sources,
offering a generative reading experience geared towards promoting a robust
future.
The
first book, Classic Readings on Monster
Theory, provides a curated set of five critical studies specifically
focused on theorizing monsters and monstrosity, and four studies from “allied
theories” that have helped to shape the direction of monster studies through
intersectional and interdisciplinary avenues. The “Classic” in the title is
apt, as the essays and excerpts in this book are from older studies that
represent the foundational critical framework for the field. The monster theory
section leads off with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Monsters and the Critics,” the
1936 lecture-turned-essay that opened up the idea of examining the monsters in
Old English literature as subjects of scholarly interest in their own right.
This essay is followed by excerpts from John Block Friedman’s 1981 The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and
Thought and Noël Carroll’s 1990 The
Philosophy of Horror. Rounding out this section are two watershed works
from 1996: Michael Camille’s important (and too-often overlooked beyond Art
Historical circles) “Rethinking the Canon: Prophets, Canons, and Promising
Monsters” and the insta-classic “Monster Culture: Seven Theses” written by
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. The “allied theories” section includes excerpts from
Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism, a
foundational work in postcolonial studies;
feminist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s theory of “abjection” from her 1980
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection;
the introduction to J. Halberstan’s 1995 queer examination of “Gothic
Monstrosity” in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror
and the Technology of Monsters and the introduction to Rosemary Garland
Thomson’s 1996 Freakery: Cultural
Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, an influential work in disability
studies. Each text is preceded by a page of notes including a critical
introduction, reading questions, and further reading, all intended as
orientation and guide for students and those new to the field.
I
have a few minor complaints about this first volume overall: there are a number
of typos and small-word omissions scattered throughout and the citation
practices are inconsistent (this is, of course, due to the fact that these
essays were originally published in different venues, but even within
individual essays at times there are inconsistencies which the editors might
silently amend); there is an inconsistent employment of cross-referencing
(bold-printing names that appear in more than one essay) that doesn’t really
work as it is presented (maybe offering a footnote or side note with the
cross-referenced page(s) would be more helpful?) and finally, and somewhat
disappointingly, the reading questions at times are leading in nature rather
than designed to promote open-ended inquiry; for example, the first two
questions for the Kristeva piece are: “Why did Kristeva choose to write in such
a prickly, difficult style?” and “How does this affect your reading process and
ultimate understanding of the text?” Although surely not intentional, as worded
these questions paint the essay in a negative light for the target audience and
direct readers to offer a critique grounded in its “prickly” and “difficult”
tone rather than in its contents (and frankly, as I have experienced in my own
classes, Tolkien’s essay is likely to be viewed by current students as just as
difficult, if not more so, to understand.) All of these concerns could easily
be remedied in future editions of the volume and do not detract from its
overall pedagogical importance and usefulness.
The
second volume is a collection of primary texts representing literary and visual
monsters from ancient Babylon’s Epic of
Gilgamesh to the 2009 creation of Slender Man. These have been selected to
provide something of a historical overview of monster stories and figures, with
a fairly even distribution between premodern, early modern, and modern works.
The emphasis is on the Western literary and visual canon, with most texts
either classics taught in Western Civ and literary survey courses or British,
American, or Canadian in origin. This is intentional and specific, as per the
back cover copy one of the aims of these books is to demonstrate “the
consistent, multi-millennium strategies the West has articulated, weaponized,
and deployed to exclude, disempower, and dehumanize a range of groups and
individuals within and without its porous boundaries.” Longer texts are
excerpted to emphasize the scenes featuring monsters and monstrous figures. All
texts from the premodern period appear in translation, many of these
commissioned specifically for the volume and providing lively and engaging,
student-friendly renditions. The volume editors have further normalized and
modernized the language of Renaissance texts, so that the entire volume’s
contents are accessible to readers whether they have exposure to earlier forms
of English or not. There are multiple texts included which provide cross- and
comparative reading of particular monster figures in different eras and
cultures: for example, the Old English Beowulf
(here, excerpted with permission from Roy Liuzza’s absolutely splendid
translation for Broadview Press) and John Gardner’s modern retelling from the
monster’s point of view, Grendel.
There are also texts that challenge an easy understanding of monsters as such,
like Edgar Allan Poe’s doppelgänger tale, “William Wilson,” and Theodore
Sturgeon’s plant-monster horror story, “It.”
Together,
these volumes comprise an insta-course in monsters and monstrosity, providing a
syllabus of primary and critical secondary sources that is readily customizable
for any variety of undergraduate literature, critical theory, or general ed.
courses in civilization or culture; with further enhancement from a
knowledgeable professor they could also be used in graduate courses, especially
at the Master’s level for a special topics course on monsters or as a general
topical survey. The first volume could also be assigned, in part or whole, as a
theoretical framework in Art History, film and media, introductory theory, and
similar types of courses. Experienced monster scholars may not find much in
these volumes that they don’t already know, know of, or have in their
libraries, but the books are a convenient repository of commonly-consulted
materials and worth the purchase as such. They are also an outstanding resource
for students, independent study, and for enthusiasts and aficionados of
monsters and monster studies and (in the paperback format) reasonably priced
for the student and general audience. Taken in whole or in part, separately or
together, these books seem destined to spur a new generation of readers to
appreciate the many ways that monsters are good to think with, and to rise to
the challenge of listening and responding to what they have to tell us.
Melissa Ridley Elmes
Lindenwood University
