Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 224 pages
• Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press October 11, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0812237021
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0812237023
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 15.2 ounces

Product Review
A thoughtful, in-depth, scholarly study of the fantastic and hideous creatures abounding in myth, legend, and folklore around the world. -- The Midwest Book Review

His engaging book suggests a universal need to extend perceptions of evil far beyond the obvious. -- Choice

Product Description


The human mind requirements monsters. In every culture and in every epoch in human history, from ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, imaginary beings have haunted dreams and fantasies, provoking in young and old shivers of delight, thrills of terror, and endless fascination. All known folklores brim with visions of looming and ferocious monsters, often in the role as adversaries to great heroes. But while heroes have been closely studied by mythologists, monsters have been neglected, even though they are equally important as pan-human symbols and reveal similar insights into ways the mind works. In Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors, anthropologist David D. Gilmore explores what human traits monsters represent and why they are so ubiquitous in people's imaginations and share so many features across different cultures.

Using colorful and absorbing evidence from virtually all times and places, Monsters is the first attempt by an anthropologist to delve into the mysterious, frightful abyss of mythical beasts and to interpret their role in the psyche and in society. After many hair-raising descriptions of monstrous beings in art, folktales, fantasy, literature, and community ritual, including such avatars as Dracula and Frankenstein, Hollywood ghouls, and extraterrestrials, Gilmore identifies many common denominators and proposes some novel interpretations.

Monsters, according to Gilmore, are always enormous, man-eating, gratuitously violent, aggressive, sexually sadistic, and superhuman in power, combining our worst nightmares and our most urgent fantasies. We both abhor and worship our monsters: they are our gods as well as our demons. Gilmore argues that the immortal monster of the mind is a complex creation embodying virtually all of the inner conflicts that make us human. Far from being something alien, nonhuman, and outside us, our monsters are our deepest selves.

Reader Reviews
Joseph Campbell gave much attention to the universal nature of folk heroes in his seminal "Hero of a Thousand Faces." He advanced the idea of the monomyth, a fundamental story told time and time again in every culture. Gilmore, in "Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors" seeks to continue Campbell's thinking, this time examining the monsters which heroes are pitted against in these monomyths. Gilmore is no Campbell, however, and what was a life's work to Campbell is just a one-time, although enthusiastic, book for Gilmore. He does assemble a fair argument on a universal monster; Larger than normal in size, Human eating, combining the traits of several animals into a single creature. It is true that most monsters fit this general description, and he gives us a good picture of the fundamental fear of the human mind. The main case studies in "Monster" are the North American Wendigo and the Spanish and French Tarasque. These get an in-depth study, while much of the rest of the book is a tour through monsters of the world, in cultures as diverse as Japan, China and East Asia, the United States, Europe and the Hopi of North America. More interesting than the shared form is how this "Mono-monster" is viewed in the various cultures, sometimes feared, sometimes worshiped, sometimes accepted with neutrality. While all cultures give breed to something similar in shape and temperament, they do not all respond to the beast in the same manner, according to Gilmore's research. There is clearly room here for further study, and "Monsters" is ultimately wide but not deep. Perhaps the area covered is a bit too wide for such a slim book, as there are a few factual errors that creep in. I recognized a few glaring errors in the chapters on Japan, which is my own particular area of expertise. For instance, he says that the Edo period preceded the "modern Tokugawa period." In fact, the Tokugawa era is a medieval period, and Edo was succeeded by Meji, when Japan modernized. While this kind of slip may have little impact on his overall ideas, it does bring into question the accuracy of his other statements.