Studies in English: Monster Lit

English 2000
Section 05
Semester
Fall
Year
2025
Lee Manion
Monday
Wednesday
Friday
2:00-2:50pm
Course Description
An old house superimposed over a human face.

Monsters of various sorts have occupied a key place in the literary imagination for centuries, and continue to do so today. Yet why keep telling such stories? Are they only for a good scare on a dark and stormy night? A recent theorist writing on the human need to imagine monsters states that the monster is “an embodiment of difference, a breaker of category, and a resistant Other” who is nonetheless dangerously “hybrid.” How does the monster simultaneously resist assimilation into “normal” society and challenge cultural norms? 

In this course we will explore the different forms that monsters assume across time and how these forms raise or imply questions about the threat of the unknown or unfamiliar. These questions include the boundary between the human and the animal, issues of race, gender, sexuality, and ability, the role of rationality and the spiritual, and the relationship between the past and present. Primary readings will range from medieval werewolf tales and William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to folktales of Little Red Riding Hood, Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” vampire stories, and modern novels such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. We will end the course by considering some recent monsters in comic books and films. Assignments will include shorter papers, a group presentation, and a final research or creative project.