"A comprehensive modern-day bestiary."--The New Yorker Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--howthey have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and whatshapes they are likely to take in the future. Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gogand Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel andFrankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory beyond the safe enclosures ofrational thought.Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated. Asma suggests that how we handle monsters reflects how we handle uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure andmore ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters--andthereby avoiding becoming one. AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Extraordinary BeingsPart 1 - Ancient Monsters1 Alexander Fights Monsters in India2 Monsters Are Nature's Playthings3 Hermaphrodites and Man-headed Oxen4 Monstrous DesirePart 2 - Medieval Monsters: Messages from God5 Biblical Monsters6 Do Monsters Have Souls?7 The Monster Killer8 Possessing Demons and WitchesPart 3 - Scientific Monsters: The Book of Nature is Riddled with Typos9 Natural History, Freaks, and Nondescripts10 The Medicalization of Monsters11 Darwin's MutantsPart 4 - Inner Monsters: The Psychological Aspects12 The Art of Human Vulnerability: Angst and Horror13 Criminal Monsters: Psychopathology, Aggression, and the Malignant HeartPart 5 - Monsters Today and Tomorrow14 Torturers, Terrorists, and Zombies: The Products of Monstrous Societies15 Future Monsters: Robots, Mutants, and Posthuman CyborgsEpilogueNotesIndex An erudite yet very readable monster-fest.
- ISBN: 978-0-19-979809-4
- Editorial: Oxford University
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 368
- Fecha Publicación: 27/10/2011
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés