Monsters and the Monstrous

As excited as we are for the launch of our conference registration, we know that the level of interest the event has generated since September far exceeds the number of people who will be travelling to Edinburgh in June. While we hope to see as many of you at the conference as can make it, we also want to continue providing resources support for those of you who can't.

Which is why we are also excited to announce the publication of The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman. This sensational book looks to be a landmark release in the field of monster studies, and features essays by conference keynote Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (who brought the collection to our attention), as well as Patricia MacCormack, John Block Friedman, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Dana Oswald, Debra Higgs Strickland, Karl Steel, and Peter J. Dendle.

Sufficiently weighty, both in mass and in content, from the looks of the table of contents and available excerpts, to justify the list price, there seems little doubt that the Companion will become a stable of monster researchers' libraries everywhere. In an emerging field of study, we can't help but gleefully imagine the shock and awe it will inspire in newly inducted students as it works its way into core course syllabi.

On a lighter, and more literary, note, we would also like to point out that this week marks the "12 Days of Monsters" on the Weird Fiction Review website. Posts by Jeff VanderMeer and Nancy Hightower have already touched on China Miéville, and throughout the whole week Pretty Monsters, a novella by Kelly Link, is available, as is a free download of VanderMeer's own Monstrous Creatures collection. Well worth keeping an eye on as the week unfolds!

Of course, a reminder that registration, travel, and accommodation info can now be found on the "Fees and Information" page here.

Monstrous Mothers in Old English Literature

If you are passionate about Old and Middle English Literature and monstrosity, take a look at Dana Oswald's illuminating article Unnatural Women, Invisible Mothers: Monstrous Female Bodies in 'Wonders of the East', reflecting on the Anglo Saxon mother as an 'object of shameful excess' which 'exceeds the understanding of literate monks and noblemen' and is rarely featured in Old English literature. More specifically, the article addresses mothers in Wonders of the East, an Old English prose piece written around AD 1000, which either remains invisible or function as gender hybrids, challenging 'the integrity of the sexed and gendered body and also reconfigure the very nature of reproduction and maternity.' Wonders of the East is a text populated with monsters, especially those posessing human and animal characteristics like fauns, sirens and hippocentaurs - still considered as human, 'visibly monstrous through lack, excess or hibridity.'
Oswald writes on monstrous mothers:

Their monstrosity relies upon their sex and gender status, and therefore, by definition, men cannot be part of their communities. Although motherhood is suggested and then occluded frequently in this text when we are told monsters are born in the East, such is not the case for the two female monsters in 'Wonders'. Rather, I argue that their specific kinds of monstrosity rely on their possession of bodies that are both masculine and feminine, and indeed, on the very dangers such hybrid bodies suggest. Although the text does not say so explicitly, it subtly suggests that, because there are no male members in these exclusively female communities, perhaps what is most monstrous about these women is that to become mothers, they do not require men.

Dana Oswald is also author of Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature, where she reflects on monstrosity and Wonders of the East, Beowulf, Mandeville's Travels, Morte Arthure, Sir Gowther and many others.