Monsters in the literary imagination– and in culture at large– are both born and made, and my upper-division English class explores how we make, and make meaning from, the monstrous, the villainous, and the alien.
The theme for YSU English 3771 British Literature in Historical Perspectives is “Monsters, Mayhem, and Murder”; and we’re reading English Renaissance dramatic and popular texts that depict both ‘typical’ monsters: fantastic creatures that morph human and animal characteristics, and also real-life monsters—corrupt kings, persecuted witches, and even murderous housewives.
Monsters have long been embodiments of a culture’s fears and anxieties, and they signal the ways we define our norms, values, and beliefs against these villains or monstrosities. The class began with an overview of ‘monster theory’ and a look at modern horror, from George A. Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead,” an O.G. zombie film that dramatizes America’s grappling with civil rights and the space race through the figure of the undead, (with a shoutout to Youngstown by the way) to slasher films that often feature a societal outcast seeking murderous revenge.
From there we read back to early modern surgeon Ambroise Pare’s ‘On monsters and marvels’(1573). Pare describes monsters as warnings and signs, and he provides accounts and illustrations of fantastic creatures—beings with human heads on bird or fish bodies, or children born with heads below their shoulders. The accounts of such births reflect that cultures’ porous borders between science, myth, and superstition, and also ideas about order, stability, and transgression. And Pare’s work enjoys a long life– from its 16th century publication through the eighteenth century, his monsters are lifted into recurring, popular, accounts of ‘monstrous births’ that are linked to current events—a kind of precursor to the meme, as these depictions are recycled and repurposed over time.
From this grounding in modern and pre-modern monster theories, we’re exploring how writers like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare depict monstrosity in plays about ‘real life’ witches, legendary necromancers, and ill-fated historical rulers. Reading these dramas alongside popular source materials like execution ballads (it’s a thing) and scaffold confessions, invites us to view them as precursors to popular ‘true crime’ genres.
Our focus reveals the ways in which cultures construct monsters as embodiments for social norms about gender, class, race, ability, and ethnicity, and we’re also discussing how many of these ideas are relevant today. For example, how might we think about the perils and possibilities of AI through Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, a scholar who pledges his soul to Lucifer in exchange for illusory knowledge and power, or, how can we see in Shakespeare’s ableist villainization of the ‘deformed’ Richard III our current fascination with politicians’ health and appearance?
I’ve been studying early modern England for almost 30 years now, and I’m always struck by how, in this relatively brief span of time, we see amazing convergence of so many energies and tensions. In the English Renaissance, we have technological innovation, religious and political upheaval, astounding cultural output in the arts and sciences, and some serious grappling with big questions about what it means to be human. In all of this complexity—and drama– the past feels startlingly present.
— Timothy Francisco, Professor of English, Youngstown State University
