To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Monsters, fiction.
Journal articles on the topic 'Monsters, fiction'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Monsters, fiction.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Vorobej, Mark. "Monsters and the Paradox of Horror." Dialogue 36, no. 2 (1997): 219–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0012217300009483.
Full textAbstract:
RésuméL'horreur en art vise à effrayer, bouleverser, dégoûter et terroriser. Puisque nous ne sommes pas normalement attirés par de ielles expériences, pourquoi quiconque s'exposerait-il délibérément a la fiction d'horreur? Noel Carroll soutient que le caractère constant du phénomène de l'horreur en art tient à certains plaisirs d'ordre cognitif, qui résultent de la satisfaction de notre curiosité naturelle à l'ègard des monstres. Je soutiens, quant è moi, que la solution cognitive de Carroll auparadoxe de l'horreur est profondément erronée, étant donné la façon dont les monsters sont représentés dans la fiction d'horreur; j'explore brievement une approche plus prometteuse, qui traite les monstres comme des moyens pour acquerir la connaissance de soi.
2
Longo, Angela. "The remaking of tokusatsu monsters." Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 16, no. 1 (June 1, 2023): 81–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jafp_00090_1.
Full textAbstract:
Since the arrival of Godzilla (1954), the science-fiction genre of tokusatsu started booming its monsters by adapting different DIY techniques. The post-war period defined a collaborative effort between artists who worked within limited creative conditions due to economic restraints. They experimented with unusual materials for making monsters and image techniques to create visual effects on the filmed screen. Sculptors, art students, freelance workers and animators started collaborating to discover ways to produce suitmation and strategies to make the monster seem alive. Specifically, in Toho Studios, the Special Effects Department, directed by Tsuburaya Eiji, helped create a generation of monster-making specialists that spread to other studios. Along with Iizuka Sadao, they produced special effects using the animation stand and animation-related techniques, such as optical composition, to create the monster zigzag gleaming rays that became the staple of tokusatsu monsters. The analogue era of monster-making only starts to change from the Heisei Gamera series (1995–2006), where analogue and digital intertwine and culminate in Shin Godzilla (2016). This article investigates the possibilities of monster creation and adaptation and how this challenge created a space for hybrid images in the contemporary Japanese media landscape.
3
Callan, William. "New Law of the Land." Digital Literature Review 10, no. 1 (April 18, 2023): 86–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.33043/dlr.10.1.86-94.
Full textAbstract:
Monsters are tied to what we consider normal or abnormal in our cultures. Jeffrey Cohen’s “monster theory” states that society places its own anxiety or fear of something or someone who breaks cultural expectations into the monsters they create. The fear we have of these monsters makes them incredibly popular in our cultures. In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, the main antagonist and cold-blooded killer Chigurh fits the mold of the monster theory perfectly in many ways. In the novel, after stealing millions of dollars from a drug deal gone awry, Moss is hunted down by Chigurh ruthlessly. He represents both the fear and desire of our societal norms by rejecting all humanity via his brutality; however, he maintains a playfulness when it comes to deciding his victims’ fates, utilizing coin-flipping to determine whether the victims live or die. By looking at Chigurh through the lens of “monster theory,” we see that he fits the mold of the traditional villain in crime fiction stories, while also managing to surprise readers by just how nefarious he really is. Of course, it would be unwise to assume that Chigurh is without humanity; he is often given shockingly human characteristics to ground him in reality, which makes him and the state of lawlessness he brings about all the more terrifying. What we gain by applying monster theory is seeing how a society’s fear of violent crime is personified; it also lets us attempt to reassure ourselves of our own humanity in comparison to the absolute inhumanity of Chigurh. Through Chigurh, McCarthy has created one of the most memorable and remarkable monsters in crime fiction.
4
Higgins, Ryan S. "The Good, the God, and the Ugly: The Role of the Beloved Monster in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible." Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 74, no. 2 (April 2020): 132–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020964319896307.
Full textAbstract:
Ancient Near Eastern texts teem with horrifying and grotesque beings that pose some significant threat to the cosmos, humanity, and its institutions. Adopting Noël Carroll’s definition, such beings are monsters: interstitial not only physiologically and ontologically, but also cosmically and morally. This essay takes a comparative and literary approach to beloved monsters in Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew Bible texts. It suggests that in Ugarit and Mesopotamia, such monsters play a crucial role in advancing the goals of antipathic heroes while maintaining the integrity of sympathetic deities. It then considers the beloved monster in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretations. Finally, the essay makes note of the phenomenon’s transformation in contemporary speculative fiction. The essay argues that the beloved monster in Ugarit and Mesopotamia keeps together a fragmented cosmos, while in the Hebrew Bible it refracts through the facets in a prismatic God.
5
Sum, Robert K. "Rethinking Monstrosity and Subversion in Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death." East African Journal of Arts and Social Sciences 6, no. 2 (December 14, 2023): 363–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.37284/eajass.6.2.1624.
Full textAbstract:
The concept of monster or monstrosity is not new in African fiction. Monster characters exist in folklore, fantasy, and horror fiction. In many cases they are cast as villainous, unnatural, and horrific. Monsters are portrayed as conduit for supernatural communication. They are constructed to serve cultural roles of reinforcing conformity and policing boundaries. Monsters are also constructed as subversive characters whose existence is not bound by societal norms and conventions but whose boundless freedom opens up doors to possibilities of wish fulfilment. The above significantly influenced the choice of Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, as primary text. Who Fears Death offers multi-perspective approach to concept of monstrosity. There is a cultural perspective where superstitious beliefs and prevailing anxiety influence monstrosity. In the text, this perspective is embodied in the culture of Okeke people. It is a potentially fallible perspective as it can transmute even a morally upright person into a monster. Onyesonwu, for instance, is treated as a monster because she is half-caste. Another perspective ascribes monstrosity to an entity depending on their premeditated actions and attitude. This view holds that monstrous characters subject others to untold misery, inhumanity, and harm usually for selfish reasons. This article borrows Gothic concept of monster and postulations from theorists like Jeffrey Cohen to analyse monstrosity in the selected text Who Fears Death. In Gothic fiction, monster character represent vice, unnatural and deviations from regularity attributed to life and nature. The article finds that monstrosity should not be determined by individual’s propensity, uncanniness, or cultural beliefs but rather by actions and attitude which cause harm, hurt or destruction. The findings also affirm that acts of subversive acts are laudable if it they help undermine oppressive cultural practices
6
Pereira, Ana Carolina. "Monsters." After Dinner Conversation 2, no. 1 (2021): 70–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/adc2021217.
Full textAbstract:
What does it mean to be a monster? How do you teach people to become accustomed to seeing things they don’t initially like or understand? Whose obligation is it to break through stereotypes and create a deeper understanding, the person who is afraid, or the object of their fear? In this work of philosophical short fiction, a mother takes her child out to the park even though there are ongoing rumors of “monsters” that roam their suburban neighborhood. Those fears seem to be true, and seem to imply this is a unique world, as the driver of an ice-cream truck suffers from severe, and grotesque, physical deformities. He says the reason he works a job and goes out in public is to help others get used to seeing “people” like him. On their walk home the narrator is continually concerned about the monsters that lurk in the neighborhood as she questions if leaving the house was a good idea. She feels she is being stalked by one of the monsters as they rush back to their home. They reach relative safety when her husband sees them and brings them onto their property. That’s when she sees, newly spray painted on the garage door of their suburban house “Whites only, negros get out.” Only then do we realize that the “monsters” are those that live all around them as they are the first to integrate their suburban neighborhood. They are the ones forcing others to get used to seeing “people” like them.
7
Dasca, Maria. "Una mostra xarona. Una lectura de La <i>"Niña Gorda"</i> (1917), de Santiago Rusiñol." Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 26 (July 1, 2013): 229–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.46586/zfk.2013.229-248.
Full textAbstract:
Summary: Published in 1917, the novel La “Niña Gorda” by Santiago Rusiñol is one of the few Catalan novels dedicated to the representation of monsters. Conceived as an anti-model of two literary topics, the bovarysm and the “Ben Plantada”, the fiction is a reaction against a series of topics of Eugeni d’Ors’ discourse. Rusiñol uses a direct and realist language, a sense of antiidealist humour and the creation of an “imaginary circus” (that was used by Rusiñol at the end of the XIXth century). La “Niña Gorda” is a transition fiction, written between the “Noucentist” period and the development of the Avant-garde. [Keywords: Catalan narrative; humour; monster; Modernism; Noucentism]
8
Marini, Anna Marta, and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn. "Vampire and Monster Narratives: An Interview with Sorcha Ní Fhlainn." REDEN. Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos 3, no. 2 (May 15, 2022): 145–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.37536/reden.2022.3.1825.
Full textAbstract:
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn is a senior lecturer in film studies and American studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. She specializes in gothic studies, horror cinema, popular culture, and American studies indeed. Her work is focused in particular on vampire and monster narratives. She has published a long list of essays and several books, among which the collections Our Monster Skin: Blurring the Boundaries Between Monsters and Humanity(2010), The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films (2010), Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer (2017), and her monograph Postmodern Vampires in Film, Fiction and Popular Culture (2019).
9
Predelli, Stefano. "MODAL MONSTERS AND TALK ABOUT FICTION." Journal of Philosophical Logic 37, no. 3 (November 7, 2007): 277–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10992-007-9073-z.
Full text
10
Grigore, Rodica. "Violence and the Masks of Monsters in José Donoso’s Fiction." Theory in Action 15, no. 4 (October 31, 2022): 27–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.3798/tia.1937-0237.2225.
Full textAbstract:
In his well-known novel The Obscene Bird of Night (El obsceno pájaro de la noche, 1970) Chilean writer José Donoso analyzed the progressive decay of the old and illustrious family of Jerónimo de Azcoitía, but also the general degradation of Chilean society. Nevertheless, the novel implies a symbolic and allegoric level as such: the author discusses, in a direct or subtextual manner, the implications of the masks within the modern world and the meanings of the monstrous creatures populating the hypnotic universe of Rinconada, imagined and made up by Jerónimo in order to shelter and hide his son, Boy. The monsters prove to be different versions of human identity and they also mark the process of modern alienation, expressing the terror determined by the violence in the Latin American world of the 20th century. KEYWORDS: Latin American Literature, Fiction, Identity, Mask, Monster, Violence.
11
Clasen, Mathias. "Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories." Review of General Psychology 16, no. 2 (June 2012): 222–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027918.
Full textAbstract:
Horror fiction is a thriving industry. Many consumers pay hard-earned money to be scared witless by films, books, and computer games. The well-told horror story can affect even the most obstinate skeptic. How and why does horror fiction work? Why are people so fascinated with monsters? Why do horror stories generally travel well across cultural borders, if all they do is encode salient culturally contingent anxieties, as some horror scholars have claimed? I argue that an evolutionary perspective is useful in explaining the appeal of horror, but also that this perspective cannot stand alone. An exhaustive, vertically integrated theory of horror fiction incorporates the cultural dimension. I make the case for a biocultural approach, one that recognizes evolutionary underpinnings and cultural variation.
12
Fernández, Richard Jorge. "Guilt, Greed and Remorse: Manifestations of the Anglo-Irish Other in J. S. Le Fanu’s “Madame Crowl’s Ghost” and “Green Tea”." Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 42, no. 2 (December 23, 2020): 233–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.28914/atlantis-2020-42.2.12.
Full textAbstract:
Monsters and the idea of monstrosity are central tenets of Gothic fiction. Such figures as vampires and werewolves have been extensively used to represent the menacing Other in an overtly physical way, identifying the colonial Other as the main threat to civilised British society. However, this physically threatening monster evolved, in later manifestations of the genre, into a more psychological, mind-threatening being and, thus, werewolves were left behind in exchange for psychological fear. In Ireland, however, this change implied a further step. Traditional ethnographic divisions have tended towards the dichotomy Anglo-Irish coloniser versus Catholic colonised, and early examples of Irish Gothic fiction displayed the latter as the monstrous Other. However, the nineteenth century witnessed a move forward in the development of the genre in Ireland. This article shows how the change from physical to psychological threat implies a transformation or, rather, a displacement—the monstrous Other ceases to be Catholic to instead become an Anglo-Irish manifestation. To do so, this study considers the later short fictions of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and analyses how theDublin-born writer conveys his postcolonial concerns over his own class by depicting them simultaneously as the causers of and sufferers from their own colonial misdeeds.
13
Neijmann, Daisy L. "Soldiers and Other Monsters: the Allied Occupation in Icelandic Fiction." Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 23 (December 1, 2016): 96–120. http://dx.doi.org/10.29173/scancan121.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT: Wars and arms long remained a foreign phenomenon in Iceland until the country was occupied by Allied forces during WWII. Although the occupation was a “friendly” one and the army brought unprecedented wealth to the country, the presence of a foreign military was objectionable and distressing to many. Literature, historiography, and scholarship on the occupation have long been obsessed with the so-called ástandskonan (woman fraternizing with soldiers), the perceived incarnation of an invaded and polluted nation. This article examines the response of Icelandic fiction writers to the occupation through the figure of the soldier instead. A focus on fictional representations of the soldier enables us to see how writers imagine the occupation and its consequences for the nation, its culture, and, not least, for an injured sense of manhood.
14
Nikam, Dr Sudhir V., and Mr Rajkiran J. Biraje. "A Critical Study of Stephen King and Horror Fiction." SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 7, no. 5 (May 28, 2019): 23. http://dx.doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v7i5.10176.
Full textAbstract:
This present research undertakes the extensive study of horror fiction genre with reference to the select novels of one of the finest and celebrated horror fiction writers of all time, Stephen King. This paper is a substantial assessment of the select horror fiction of King. The research problem revolves extensively around the word fear. Stephen King has conjured up the images of most horrific creatures, monsters, places, and stories, and some of the most enduring villains in fiction. These unimaginable evil beings test the limits of the protagonist. Some of these villains have gone to the extent of becoming as famous (or infamous) as the writer himself. Many of Stephen King villains are monsters of the human variety such as serial killers, power hungry despots, nihilists, etc. His most memorable and monumental characters are the supernatural ones who use their dark powers to twist the orderly world around them into a special place of chaos and pain. It has been assumed that the horror elements in the fiction of Stephen King are the result of his strategic use of supernaturalist and non-supernaturalist elements. The techniques that he uses to evoke horror in reader have been treated as a site for research attention by the researcher.
15
Weekes, Ann Owens, and Anne K. Mellor. "Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters." Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 43, no. 1/2 (1989): 107. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1347208.
Full text
16
Sharp, Sabine Ruth. "Salt Fish Girl and “Hopeful Monsters”: Using Monstrous Reproduction to Disrupt Science Fiction’s Colonial Fantasies." Contemporary Women's Writing 13, no. 2 (July 2019): 222–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpz022.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract The revival of the Frankenstein origin myth has left science fiction’s relationship to colonialism undertheorized. More recent creative interventions have, however, challenged the genre’s colonialist legacy: two works that achieve this are Larissa Lai’s novel Salt Fish Girl (2002) and Hiromi Goto’s short story “Hopeful Monsters” (2004). Using different forms of unruly reproduction—strange births, recurring histories, and eclectic intertextuality—these texts unravel the tangled histories of science fiction and colonialism. Using tropes of repetition and mutation, Lai and Goto trace not a myth of origins but the texture of interwoven histories of gendered and racialized oppression. Monstrous patchworks of texts, these works interrogate the boundaries between science fiction, myth, folklore, and fantasy, showing these generic distinctions to have been buttressed by colonialist discourses.
17
Upton, Lee. "Mourning Monsters: Deception and Transformation in Rachel Ingalls's Fiction." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 33, no. 1 (September 1991): 53–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1991.9933819.
Full text
18
Rickman, Gregg. ": Androids, Humanoids, and Other Science Fiction Monsters . Per Schelde." Film Quarterly 47, no. 3 (April 1994): 62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/fq.1994.47.3.04a00190.
Full text
19
Mosselaer, Nele Van de. "How Can We Be Moved to Shoot Zombies? A Paradox of Fictional Emotions and Actions in Interactive Fiction." Journal of Literary Theory 12, no. 2 (September 3, 2018): 279–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2018-0016.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract How can we be moved by the fate of Anna Karenina? By asking this question, Colin Radford introduced the paradox of fiction, or the problem that we are often emotionally moved by characters and events which we know don’t really exist (1975). A puzzling element of these emotions that always resurfaced within discussions on the paradox is the fact that, although these emotions feel real to the people who have them, their difference from ›real‹ emotions is that they cannot motivate us to perform any actions. The idea that actions towards fictional particulars are impossible still underlies recent work within the philosophy of fiction (cf. Matravers 2014, 26 sqq.; Friend 2017, 220; Stock 2017, 168). In the past decennia, however, the medium of interactive fiction has challenged this crystallized idea. Videogames, especially augmented and virtual reality games, offer us agency in their fictional worlds: players of computer games can interact with fictional objects, save characters that are invented, and kill monsters that are clearly non-existent within worlds that are mere representations on a screen. In a parallel to Radford’s original question, we might ask: how can we be moved to shoot zombies, when we know they aren’t real? The purpose of this article is to examine the new paradox of interactive fiction, which questions how we can be moved to act on objects we know to be fictional, its possible solutions, and its connection to the traditional paradox of fictional emotions. Videogames differ from traditional fictional media in that they let their appreciators enter their fictional worlds in the guise of a fictional proxy, and grant their players agency within this world. As interactive fictions, videogames reveal new elements of the relationship between fiction, emotions, and actions that have been previously neglected because of the focus on non-interactive fiction such as literature, theatre, and film. They show us that fictional objects can not only cause actions, but can also be the intentional object of these actions. Moreover, they show us that emotions towards fictions can motivate us to act, and that conversely, the possibility of undertaking actions within the fictional world makes a wider array of emotions towards fictional objects possible. Since the player is involved in the fictional world and responsible for his actions therein, self-reflexive emotions such as guilt and shame are common reactions to the interactive fiction experience. As such, videogames point out a very close connection between emotions and actions towards fictions and introduce the paradox of interactive fiction: a paradox of fictional actions. This paradox of fictional actions that is connected to our experiences of interactive fiction consists of three premises that cannot be true at the same time, as this would result in a contradiction: 1. Players act on videogame objects. 2. Videogame objects are fictional. 3. It is impossible to act on fictional objects. The first premise seems to be obviously true: gamers manipulate game objects when playing. The second one is true for at least some videogame objects we act upon, such as zombies. The third premise is a consequence of the ontological gap between the real world and fictional worlds. So which one needs to be rejected? Although the paradox of interactive fiction is never discussed as such within videogame philosophy, there seem to be two strategies at hand to solve this paradox, both of which are examined in this article. The first strategy is to deny that the game objects we can act on are fictional at all. Espen Aarseth, for example, argues that they are virtual objects (cf. 2007), while other philosophers argue that players interact with real, computer-generated graphical representations (cf. Juul 2005; Sageng 2012). However, Aarseth’s concept of the virtual seems to be ad hoc and unhelpful, and describing videogame objects and characters as real, computer-generated graphical representations does not account for the emotional way in which we often relate to them. The second solution is based on Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory, and, similar to Walton’s solution to the original paradox of fictional emotions, says that the actions we perform towards fictional game objects are not real actions, but fictional actions. A Waltonian description of fictional actions can explain our paradoxical actions on fictional objects in videogames, although it does raise questions about the validity of Walton’s concept of quasi-emotions. Indeed, the way players’ emotions can motivate them to act in a certain manner seems to be a strong argument against the concept of quasi-emotions, which Walton introduced to explain the alleged non-motivationality of emotions towards fiction (cf. 1990, 201 sq.). Although both strategies to solve the paradox of interactive fiction might ultimately not be entirely satisfactory, the presentation of these strategies in this paper not only introduces a starting point for discussing this paradox, but also usefully supplements and clarifies existing discussions on the paradoxical emotions we feel towards fictions. I argue that if we wish to solve the paradox of actions towards (interactive) fiction, we should treat it in close conjunction with the traditional paradox of emotional responses to fiction.
20
Telotte, J. P. "Androids, Humanoids, and Other Science Fiction Monsters: Science and Soul in Science Fiction Films." Configurations 3, no. 1 (1995): 100–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/con.1995.0002.
Full text
21
Earthman, Elise Ann. "The Siren Song That Keeps Us Coming Back: Multicultural Resources for Teaching Classical Mythology." English Journal 86, no. 6 (October 1, 1997): 76–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.58680/ej19973435.
Full textAbstract:
Notes the presence of references to classical mythology throughout modern culture, and offers an annotated list of 43 works of contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama that use mythological sources and that can help close the gap between today’s students and the gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters of long ago.
22
Marini, Anna Marta, and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. "American Gothic: An Interview with Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock." REDEN. Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos 3, no. 2 (May 15, 2022): 3–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.37536/reden.2022.3.1811.
Full textAbstract:
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is currently Professor of English at Central Michigan University, where he has been teaching a variety of courses on American literature and popular culture since 2001. He’s a scholar of the Gothic with a vast academic production, in particular on supernatural fiction, film and television. His research interests span topics related to, among many, monsters, ghosts, vampires, and the female Gothic. He is also an associate editor for the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and, besides a long list of published essays, he edited three collections of tales by H.P. Lovecraft and has published over 20 books, among which Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination (2004), The Vampire Film: Undead (2012), and The Monster Theory Reader (2020). He was as well the editor of the Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic in 2018.
23
Mckee, Gabriel. "“Reality – Is it a Horror?”." Journal of Gods and Monsters 1, no. 1 (July 18, 2020): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.58997/jgm.v1i1.1.
Full textAbstract:
This paper discusses the works of author Richard S. Shaver, who rose to prominence in the science fiction world in the 1940s with stories describing a vast underworld of caverns under the surface of the earth. These caverns were inhabited by evil beings called “dero” that used high-tech devices to torment the inhabitants of the surface world. Shaver, who had spent several years in mental institutions prior to his writing career, claimed his stories were true, and Amazing’s editor, Raymond A. Palmer, aggressively promted the “Shaver Mystery.” This prompted a backlash from science fiction fandom against both Shaver and Palmer. This paper gives an overview of Shaver’s career and explores his world-system as a form of theodicy, drawing in particular on his novel Mandark, a retelling of portions of the Bible narrative. Shaver’s monsters and their devices are examples of an “influencing machine,” a commonly-occurring delusional phenomenon first described by psychologist Victor Tausk in 1919, an externalized force that a patient believes is the source of thoughts and sensations. This paper argues that, for Shaver, the dero provided a psychological framework for processing tragic and traumatic events, externalizing tormenting forces into monsters. His fiction then became a force for combatting those torments within a narrative context. Like other conspiracy theories, the Shaver Mystery seeks to impose order on a chaotic world.
24
Platten, David. "Questions of Empathy and Understanding: Monsters in Modern French Fiction." Australian Journal of French Studies 55, no. 2 (July 2018): 184–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/ajfs.2018.17.
Full text
25
Alder, Emily. "(Re)encountering monsters: animals in early-twentieth-century weird fiction." Textual Practice 31, no. 6 (September 12, 2017): 1083–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950236x.2017.1358686.
Full text
26
Price, Cheryl Blake. "VEGETABLE MONSTERS: MAN-EATING TREES IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FICTION." Victorian Literature and Culture 41, no. 2 (February 15, 2013): 311–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1060150312000411.
Full textAbstract:
Gothic stories and fictionalized travel accounts featuring dangerous exotic plants appeared throughout the nineteenth century and were especially prevalent at the fin de siècle. As the century progressed and the public's fascination with these narratives grew, fictional plants underwent a narrative evolution. By the end of the Victorian period, deadly plants had been transformed from passive poisoners into active carnivores. Stories about man-eating trees, among the most popular of the deadly plant tales, reflect this narrative progression. The trope of the man-eating tree developed out of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century accounts of a much less dangerous plant: the Javanese upas. Tales about the upas described the tree as having a poisonous atmosphere which killed every living thing within a several mile radius. The existence of this plant was first reported by a Dutch surgeon named Foersch in a 1783 article published in the London Magazine, and the story was recounted several times throughout the century (“The Valley of Poison” 46). A typical account of the popular tale would highlight the exotic location and the mysterious power of the tree: Somewhere in the far recesses of Java there is, according to Foersch, a dreadful tree, the poisonous secretions of which are so virulent, that they not only kill by contact, but poison the air for several miles around, so that the greater number of those who approach the vegetable monster are killed. Nothing whatever, he tells us, can grow within several miles of the upas tree, except some little trees of the same species. For a distance of about fifteen miles round the spot, the ground is covered with the skeletons of birds, beasts, and human beings. (“The Upas Tree of Fact and Fiction” 12) Even though more credible adventurers revealed the inaccuracies of Foersch's report and thoroughly discredited the fantastic powers attributed to the upas, the story nonetheless took hold of the Victorian imagination. As a result of Foersch's widely-circulated narrative, the word “upas” was rapidly incorporated into the English lexicon; writers such as Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens use the upas as a metaphor for a person, object, or idea that has a poisonous, destructive atmosphere. The upas was even a subject for nineteenth-century art, as evidenced by Francis Danby's 1820 gothic painting of a solitary upas tree in the midst of a desolate rocky landscape. Although the myth of the upas focuses on the tree's lethal powers, it is important to note that the upas is, relatively speaking, a very passive “vegetable monster.” The plant is potentially dangerous, but stationary; extremely isolated, it is only harmful to those who rashly ignore the warning signs and wander within the area of its poisonous influence. Even in these exaggerated accounts, the upas is a non-carnivorous monster that grows in a remote, uninhabited area of Java.
27
Genovese, Michael A. "Politics and Science Fiction Films." News for Teachers of Political Science 46 (1985): 7–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0197901900001793.
Full textAbstract:
The movie theatre may seem like an odd place for politics, but almost all movies could be considered “political.” Even stranger is the notion that those spacemen, monsters and aliens we are so accustomed to seeing in science fiction films may be more than just entertaining us, they may be conveying a political message. In fact, most science fiction films make deeply political statements about the society from which they emerge.Science fiction films provide a unique opportunity for movie makers to comment on the implications of both human and “non-human” behavior. Through science fiction, one can look ahead to the way the world “might” look if the right wing, left wing, scientific rationalists, corporations, etc., take over and create their own “Brave New World.” It is an opportunity to play out the implications of various political philosophies for all to see and evaluate.
28
McConeghy, David. "Facing the Monsters: Otherness in H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Hellboy." Religions 11, no. 2 (January 22, 2020): 58. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11020058.
Full textAbstract:
What happens when we imagine the unimaginable? This article compares recent films inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos with that author’s original early 20th century pulp horror stories. In Guillermo del Toro’s films Pacific Rim and Hellboy, monsters that would have been obscured to protect Lovecraft’s readers are now fully revealed for Hollywood audiences. Using the period-appropriate theories of Rudolf Otto on the numinous and Sigmund Freud on the uncanny, that share Lovecraft’s troubled history with racist othering, I show how modern adaptations of Lovecraft’s work invert central features of the mythos in order to turn tragedies into triumphs. The genres of Science Fiction and Horror have deep commitments to the theme of otherness, but in Lovecraft’s works otherness is insurmountable. Today, Hollywood borrows the tropes of Lovecraftian horror but relies on bridging the gap between humanity and its monstrous others to reveal a higher humanity forged through difference and diversity. This suggests that otherness in modern science fiction is a means of reconciliation, a way for the monsters to be defeated rather than the source of terror as they were in Lovecraft’s stories.
29
Bruce, Scott G. "Sunt altera nobis sidera, sunt orbes alii: Imagining Subterranean Peoples and Places in Medieval Latin Literature." Mediaevistik 32, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 105–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/med.2019.01.04.
Full textAbstract:
Owing to the enduring popularity of Jules Verne’s science fiction story Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), modern readers have taken for granted a hollow, habitable core beneath the earth’s crust as a time-honored, though scientifically implausible, setting for speculative fiction.1 Verne’s fantastic tale of Professor Otto Lidenbrock’s descent into the Icelandic volcano Snæfellsjökull and his perilous adventures underground featuring forests of giant mushrooms and prehistoric monsters remains the most widely read work of nineteenth-century “subterranean fiction.” In 1926, the story was reprinted in a three-part serial in the widely-read American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories (Fig. 1). Throughout the twentieth century, it spawned a host of imitators, from Edgar Rice Burrough’s Pellucidar series (1914‐1963) to C. S. Lewis’ Narnian chronicle The Silver Chair (1953), as well as a successful 1959 film adaptation starring James Mason and Pat Boone.
30
Rickman, Gregg. "Review: Androids, Humanoids, and Other Science Fiction Monsters by Per Schelde." Film Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1212972.
Full text
31
DA COSTA, P. FONTES. "Between Fact and Fiction: Narratives of Monsters in Eighteenth-Century Portugal." Portuguese Studies 20, no. 1 (2004): 63–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/port.2004.0019.
Full text
32
Langbauer, Laurie. "Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. Anne K. Mellor." Wordsworth Circle 20, no. 4 (September 1989): 210–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/twc24042547.
Full text
33
Bush, Harold K. "“Beating Back the Monsters”: George Orwell and the Morality of Fiction." Christianity & Literature 42, no. 2 (March 1993): 333–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014833319304200211.
Full text
34
Mutis, Ana María. "Consuming Monsters: Borderlands Ecogothic Science Fiction in Tears of the Trufflepig." Studies in American Fiction 50, no. 1-2 (March 2023): 189–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/saf.2023.a923100.
Full text
35
TATAR, Yagmur. "“Reader, unbury him with a word”: The Revenant and/as Evil in Elizabeth Kostova’s ”The Historian”." Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 14 (63), Special Issue (January 2022): 167–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.31926/but.pcs.2021.63.14.3.10.
Full textAbstract:
This research addresses the universal question of evil through an intertextual focus between Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a traditional Gothic production and its neo-Gothic counterpart, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Through investigating the relationship between two ensuing genres, it explores the understanding of human nature and its transformative capacity for evil in Gothic and neo-Gothic fiction, as well as protagonists’ need, temptation and failure to exorcise the Revenants of the past. With a theoretical framework supported by Jacques Derrida and his concept of hauntology, the present research further revolves around revealing how the monsters of the (neo-)Gothic fiction function as the manifestations of history itself by analysing the way the past haunts humanity’s present and future.
36
Genís i Mas, Daniel. "El somni de la raó (científica) provoca monstres (literaris): O com la ciència i la literatura es donen la mà." Mètode Revista de difusió de la investigació, no. 6 (April 15, 2016): 14. http://dx.doi.org/10.7203/metode.6.3481.
Full textAbstract:
Enlightened reason and romantic imagination were seen as two opposing ways of conceiving art and life. Today, from our historical vantage point, it is difficult to understand one without the other. As if the nightmares of science were nothing more than the food of romantic monsters. This article analyses the evolution of fantastic literature and the birth of scientific fiction in the nineteenth century, as well as the conflict between the rational and the supernatural.
37
Hassen Sabeeh, Qasem, and Dr Hussein Ramazan Kiaee. "اعادة النظر في تمثيل الوحش: الجمالية الطوباوية في رواية فرانكشتاين في بغداد لأحمد السعداوي." ALUSTATH JOURNAL FOR HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 58, no. 2 (June 12, 2019): 85–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.36473/ujhss.v58i2.877.
Full textAbstract:
Monsters throughout history are always explained in terms of abjection, horror and something to be avoided in order that the system and regulation of society to be restored. Following the dynamic conception of contemporary utopia, the present paper aims at analyzing the monster or the violence in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (FB) 2014 in terms of utopian site of hope, freedom and justice. It intends to show in what ways the issue of the “neo-Utopianism” or a desire for grand narratives is addressed in contemporary Iraqi fiction and why this issue is significant in post- postmodern thought. The paper revolves around post-traditional thinking of monster through investigating how a monster is related to a collective desire of hope for better roles in relation to the multiple societal crises. Other than an abject or “Other”, the value of creating such a monster is to introduce a new vision to the reader accomplished with the hope and salvation instead of the fragile spirit that comes from the postmodern failure and destruction. Within this conception the paper unfolds three routes that explicitly address a utopian desire: the body, the name and the aim or the message. The article, moreover, uncovers a new dimension of monstrosity in Iraqi literature which marks a shift from postmodernism to new era characterized by a utopian revival. The paper concludes that the monster is given a new voice and vision to be accepted in symbolic order unlike its traditional image in Gothic literature, one to speak about horror or monstrosity.
38
Carbonell, Curtis D. "Answering Lovecraft: Clive Barker’s embodied fiction." Horror Studies 12, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 97–117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/host_00031_1.
Full textAbstract:
This article asks how Clive Barker responds to H. P. Lovecraft as a horror writer. It sees in Barker a particular example of how cosmic horror emerges, even as expected Gothic tropes become renewed with interesting variations. In particular, it foregrounds a resistance by Barker to Lovecraft’s insistence that the Weird be a place where writers hint at the monsters that cause ultimate dread rather than drawing them. Barker, though, refuses to balk at such a demand, channelling the same instinct that the later Lovecraft himself developed in categorizing with scientific-like granularity the often horrific particulars of the monstrous. This article poses the Cenobites as a fitting example of how Barker combines cosmic and Gothic tropes, both within the frames of the posthuman and draconic, even as they morphed within a shared universe rooted in a Christianized metanarrative. It focuses on The Scarlet Gospels as the most fitting text in which Barker demonstrates his ability to represent the unrepresentable, a dominant concept within fruitful theorizing by thinkers as diverse as Eugene Thacker, Graham Harman and Thomas Ligotti.
39
C. Chellapandi and G. Vinoth Kumar. "The Subtle Substitution of Robots for Humans in Isaac Asimov’s I Robot." Shanlax International Journal of English 12, S1-Dec (December 14, 2023): 299–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.34293/rtdh.v12is1-dec.60.
Full textAbstract:
I Robot is a collection of nine short stories by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov that imagines the development of humanlike robots with a form of artificial intelligence. The stories originally appeared in science-fiction magazines between 1940 and 1950, the year that they were first published together in book form. Asimov’s treatment of robots as being programmed with ethics rather than as marauding metal monsters was greatly influential in the development of science fiction. This paper explores the substitution of humansfor robots. Isaac Asimov’s stories depict a gradual and often unnoticed replacement of humans by robots in various domains of human activity such as labor, law, politics, religion, and art. Isaac uses three laws of robotics, which are designed to protect humans from harm, as a narrative device to show the paradoxes and dilemmas that arise from the interaction between humans and robots. This paper explores the prevention of human calamities by using robots with specific laws.
40
Smith, Stephen W. "Dogs and Monsters: Moral Status Claims in the Fiction of Dean Koontz." Journal of Medical Humanities 37, no. 1 (February 14, 2015): 35–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9329-5.
Full text
41
Weekes, Ann Owens. "Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters by Anne K. Mellor." Rocky Mountain Review 43, no. 1-2 (1989): 107–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/rmr.1989.0020.
Full text
42
Zonn, I. S. "Arctic cinema: from horror through dramas and thrillers To Action movies and fiction (Part I)." Post-Soviet Issues 10, no. 2 (September 5, 2023): 185–210. http://dx.doi.org/10.24975/2313-8920-2023-10-2-185-210.
Full textAbstract:
The article considers a number of genres of Arctic films in the world cinema. Among them, some of the most common are horror films (horror), thrillers (part I), dramas, science fiction and action films (part II). The socio-political climate of the times determined the evolution of genres and influenced their semantic content and structure. Their formation and production flow has a calendar milestone. In the second half of the twentieth century, after the end of the Great Patriotic War, a cold war began between two blocs of states with different socio-economic systems led by the USSR and the USA. It was she who strengthened the militaristic role of the Arctic not only in the military-industrial sphere, but also in the cinematographic one. Hollywood, as part of the political and ideological machine of the United States, immediately responded with its films. The screen was politicized in the general range of Cold War sentiments. Conducting atomic tests, the appearance of the atomic bomb in the USA in 1945 and in the USSR in 1949, “flying saucers” from space, noted in 1947, brought to life horror films, science fiction and drama. The heroes of the films were monsters that descended to earth from outer space or rose from the depths of the ocean, all kinds of mechanical and biological monsters awakened by nuclear tests. In parallel, western cinema constructed models of anti-Soviet orientation. The purpose of the films was to amuse and captivate the viewer into an illusory world and at the same time, to shock, amaze, terrify and excite him with scientific or pseudoscientific fiction. This goal remains the main one for most fantastic horror and thrillers. Some of them preached violence, cruelty, conflict, degradation of the human personality. Aggressiveness, programmed in the person himself, is increasingly, manifested in Arctic thrillers and action film.
43
Lebedeva, Irena V. "Review of the Book “Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myths and History”." Corpus Mundi 4, no. 1 (July 10, 2023): 110–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.46539/cmj.v4i1.80.
Full textAbstract:
Serial killers have been a popular topic in literature for centuries, appearing in works of fiction, non-fiction, and even poetry. In literature, serial killers often represent the dark side of human nature, and their stories often explore the depths of depravity and the psychological motivations behind their heinous acts. Examples of serial killers can be found throughout history and mythology. With all that the public’s attention is usually focused on the serial murders of the latest decades, with the historical cases still generally remaining in the obscure. The reason for that lack of publicity is that serial killers in antiquity are difficult to identify, because the concept of serial killing is a relatively modern one. One of the pleasant exceptions is a book by Debbie Felton “Monsters and Monarchs: Serial Killers in Classical Myths and History” published by University of Texas Press, 2021, 235 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4773-2357-1 (paperback edition). This article reviews the book and comments on its contents and style.
44
Sawers, Naarah. "‘You molded me like clay’: David Almond’s Sexualised Monsters." Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature 18, no. 1 (June 1, 2008): 20–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.21153/pecl2008vol18no1art1179.
Full textAbstract:
Monsters and the Gothic fiction that creates them are therefore technologies, narrative technologies that produce the perfect figure for negative identity. Monsters have to be everything the human is not and, in producing the negative of the human, these novels make way for the invention of human as white, male, middle-class, and heterosexual. (Halberstam, 1995, p.22).
Something unusual is happening in some of the most well-regarded, contemporary British children’s fiction. David Almond and Neil Gaiman are investing their stories with a seemingly contemporary feminist agenda, but one that is profoundly troubled by psychoanalytic discourses that disrupt the narratives’ overt excursions into a potentially positive gender re-acculturation of child audiences. Their books often show that girls can be strong and intelligent while boys can be sensitive, but the burgeoning sexual identities of the child protagonists appear to be incompatible with the new wave of gendered equity these stories ostensibly seek. In a recent collaborative essay with two of my colleagues teaching children’s literature at Deakin University, Australia, we considered the postfeminism of ‘other mothers’ and their fraught relationships with daughters in Neil Gaiman’s stories Coraline and The Mirror Mask (forthcoming). While Almond’s Skellig(1998) and Clay (2006) ostensibly tell very different fantastic tales, the differences, on closer inspection, seem only to relate to the gender of the protagonists. Gaiman’s girls and Almond’s boys undertake an identical Oedipal quest for heteronormative success, and in doing so reverse the politically correct bids for gender equality made on their narrative surfaces. When read through a psychoanalytical lens, the narratives also undo all the potential transformations of gendered politics made possible through the authors’ employment of magical realism that could offer manifold ways to disrupt binary oppositions. Indeed, that all four stories rely on the blurring of fantasy and reality might be more telling still about the ambivalence with which feminism is tolerated and/or advanced in a progressive nation like Britain. In such a culture the theoretical premise of equality is acceptable, but strange fantasies emerge in response, and gender difference is rearticulated.
45
Pisarska, Katarzyna. "Darwin’s Monsters: Evolution, Science, and the Gothic in Christian Alvart’s ”Pandorum”." Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature 43, no. 2 (July 3, 2019): 157. http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2019.43.2.157-166.
Full textAbstract:
<p>This article analyses Gothic tropes in the science fiction film <em>Pandorum</em> (2009, dir. Christian Alvart), through the lens of such concepts as evolution and science, which are presented in the film as inherently monstrous. Key to the analysis is the notion of the return of the repressed (or abjected) past which invades the future, disrupting biological, social, and moral borders of the human. This Gothic return, facilitated by advanced science and technology, turns the future into a site of humanity’s confrontation with their animal instincts, highlighting the fragility of our civilisation and proving our subjection to evolutionary processes.</p>
46
Macfarlane, Karen E. "Here Be Monsters: Imperialism, Knowledge and the Limits of Empire." Text Matters, no. 6 (November 23, 2016): 74–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2016-0005.
Full textAbstract:
It has become a truism in discussions of Imperialist literature to state that the British empire was, in a very significant way, a textual exercise. Empire was simultaneously created and perpetuated through a proliferation of texts (governmental, legal, educational, scientific, fictional) driven significantly by a desire for what Thomas Richards describes as “one great system of knowledge.” The project of assembling this system assumed that all of the “alien” knowledges that it drew upon could be easily assimilated into existing, “universal” (that is, European) epistemological categories. This belief in “one great system” assumed that knowledges from far-flung outposts of empire could, through careful categorization and control, be made to reinforce, rather than threaten, the authority of imperial epistemic rule. But this movement into “new” epistemic as well as physical spaces opened up the disruptive possibility for and encounter with Foucault’s “insurrection of subjugated knowledges.” In the Imperial Gothic stories discussed here, the space between “knowing all there is to know” and the inherent unknowability of the “Other” is played out through representations of failures of classification and anxieties about the limits of knowledge. These anxieties are articulated through what is arguably one of the most heavily regulated signifiers of scientific progress at the turn of the century: the body. In an age that was preoccupied with bodies as spectacles that signified everything from criminal behaviour, psychological disorder, moral standing and racial categorization, the mutable, unclassifiable body functions as a signifier that mediates between imperial fantasies of control and definition and fin-de-siècle anxieties of dissolution and degeneration. In Imperial Gothic fiction these fears appear as a series of complex explorations of the ways in which the gap between the known and the unknown can be charted on and through a monstrous body that moves outside of stable classification.
47
Gibert, Teresa. "Unraveling the Mysteries of Childhood: Metaphorical Portrayals of Children in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction." ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, no. 39 (December 12, 2018): 29–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.39.2018.29-50.
Full textAbstract:
Most metaphorical expressions related to children in Margaret Atwood’s novels and short stories can be grouped into two coherent sets. The predominant negative set includes a wide range of monsters and hideous animals, whereas the much shorter list of positive representations encompasses sunflowers, jewels, feathers, little angels, gifts and lambs. Negative representations of children in Atwood’s fiction are generally rendered in an unconventional manner and reflect the frustration felt by realistically portrayed characters in their everyday experience. On the contrary, favorable expressions have a tendency toward stereotype and often belong to the world of memories, dreams and illusions.
48
Inbaraj, M., and Abdul Mohammed Ali Jinnah. "Posthuman Gothic and Monstrosity in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad." World Journal of English Language 12, no. 1 (March 15, 2022): 384. http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v12n1p384.
Full textAbstract:
Posthuman Gothic is one of the recent emerging areas of research in the twenty-first century. It explores the different ways in which Posthuman thoughts and ideologies conflate with Gothicism in all its contemporary variations. Primarily, the posthuman gothic concerns itself with the human beings’ technological, biomedical, and supernatural experiments with the human body and consciousness that alters the human identity into the posthuman. The possibility and capability of humans to alter the human identity into something other than human or into the ‘posthuman other’ create anxiety among humans. The humans’ fear of becoming the posthuman other or encounters with the posthuman other over the course of evolution is the nucleus or the driving mechanics of the posthuman gothic genre. The Posthuman Gothic fiction deals with the scientific, technological, as well as supernatural developments on cyborgs, android robots, bio-engineered transhumans, vampires, zombies, and Frankenstein monsters in a gothic setting that opens up a dystopian posthuman future or condition. Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad deals with the Frankenstein monster kind of posthuman that kills humans and poses a threat to human lives in a post-modern gothic setting. In this paper, the researchers try to highlight the dovetailing of the posthuman thoughts with the post-modern gothic setting and the posthuman monstrosity of the posthuman other, i.e a Frankenstein monster with multiple consciousness that threatens the human identity, lives, survival, and the very existence in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad through the posthuman gothic lens.
49
Rahayu, Anik Cahyaning, Sudarwati Sudarwati, and Susie Chrismalia Garnida. "Magical Phenomena in Reality in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief." Seltics Journal: Scope of English Language Teaching Literature and Linguistics 7, no. 1 (June 24, 2024): 109–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.46918/seltics.v7i1.2198.
Full textAbstract:
This research examines the elements of magical realism, using descriptive qualitative method, a literary genre depicting magic in the modern world, in Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief." Applying Wendy B. Faris' theory of magical realism's five characteristics: the irreducible element, the phenomenal world, unsettling doubts, merging realism, and disruption of time/space/identity. The research identifies these aspects in the novel. The analysis reveals the novel contains irreducible magical elements like worlds, characters, and objects, exemplified by Percy's encounter with the shape-shifting monster Erinyes disguised as his teacher. The phenomenal world encompasses magical places and beings. Unsettling doubts arise from Percy directly addressing the reader about his experiences. Merging realism intertwines the magical realm rooted in myths with the tangible world, as monsters and gods frequently intermingle with reality. Disruption of time manifests when Percy experiences slowed time at the Lotus Hotel during his quest. The study concludes that "The Lightning Thief" exhibits all five characteristics of magical realism by integrating mythological magic into the contemporary setting. Irreducible magical elements, a phenomenal, magical world, narrator-induced unsettling doubts, the merging of mythical and real realms, and space-time distortions collectively categorize the novel as an exemplar of magical realist fiction.
50
Manney, PJ. "Yucky gets yummy: how speculative fiction creates society." Teknokultura. Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales 16, no. 2 (October 9, 2019): 243–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/tekn.64857.
Full textAbstract:
Human biology creates empathy through storytelling and emulation. Throughout history, humans have honed their capacity to understand optimum storytelling and relate to others in new ways. The bioethical concepts of Leon Kass’s Wisdom of Repugnance and Arthur Caplan’s Yuck Factor attempt to describe, and in Kass’s case even support, society’s abhorrence of that which is strange, against God or nature, or simply the “other.” However, speculative fiction has been assessing the “other” for as long as we’ve told speculative stories. The last thousand years of social liberalization and technological progress in Western civilization can be linked to these stories through feedback loops of storytelling, technological inspiration and acceptance, and social change by growing the audience’s empathy for these speculative characters. Selecting highlights of speculative fiction as far back as the Bible and as recently as the latest movie blockbusters, society has grappled back and forth on whether monsters, superhumans, aliens, and the “other” are considered villainous, frightening and yucky, or heroic, aspirational and yummy. The larger historical arc of speculative fiction, technological acceptance and history demonstrates the clear shift from yucky to yummy. Works include The Bible, Talmud, stories of alchemists and the Brazen Head, Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, gothic horror films of Germany and the U.S., Superman and the Golden Age of comics, and recent blockbusters, among others.