Monster
A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive, with a strange or grotesque appearance that causes terror and fear, often in humans. Monsters usually resemble bizarre, deformed, otherworldly and/or mutated animals or entirely unique creatures of varying sizes, but may also take a human form, such as mutants, ghosts, spirits, zombies, or cannibals, among other things. They may or may not have supernatural powers, but are usually capable of killing or causing some form of destruction, threatening the social or moral order of the human world in the process.
This article is about the legendary creatures. For other uses, see Monster (disambiguation).
Animal monsters are outside the moral order, but sometimes have their origin in some human violation of the moral law (e.g. in the Greek myth, Minos does not sacrifice to Poseidon the white bull which the god sent him, so as punishment Poseidon makes Minos' wife, Pasiphaë, fall in love with the bull. She copulates with the beast, and gives birth to the man with a bull's head, the Minotaur). Human monsters are those who by birth were never fully human (Medusa and her Gorgon sisters) or who through some supernatural or unnatural act lost their humanity (werewolves, Frankenstein's monster), and so who can no longer, or who never could, follow the moral law of human society.
Monsters may also be depicted as misunderstood and friendly creatures who frighten individuals away without wanting to, or may be so large, strong and clumsy that they cause unintentional damage or death. Some monsters in fiction are depicted as mischievous and boisterous but not necessarily threatening (such as a sly goblin), while others may be docile but prone to becoming angry or hungry, thus needing to be tamed and taught to resist savage urges, or killed if they cannot be handled or controlled successfully.
Monsters pre-date written history, and the academic study of the particular cultural notions expressed in a society's ideas of monsters is known as monstrophy.[1] Monsters have appeared in literature and in feature-length films. Well-known monsters in fiction include Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, vampires, demons, mummies, and zombies.
Cultural heritage[edit]
In the words of Tina Marie Boyer, assistant professor of medieval German literature at Wake Forest University, "monsters do not emerge out of a cultural void; they have a literary and cultural heritage".[3]
In the religious context of ancient Greeks and Romans, monsters were seen as signs of "divine displeasure", and it was thought that birth defects were especially ominous, being "an unnatural event" or "a malfunctioning of nature".[4]
Monsters are not necessarily abominations however. The Roman historian Suetonius, for instance, describes a snake's absence of legs or a bird's ability to fly as monstrous, as both are "against nature".[5] Nonetheless, the negative connotations of the word quickly established themselves, and by the playwright and philosopher Seneca's time, the word had extended into its philosophical meaning, "a visual and horrific revelation of the truth".[6]
In spite of this, mythological monsters such as the Hydra and Medusa are not natural beings, but divine entities. This seems to be a holdover from Proto-Indo-European religion and other belief systems, in which the divisions between "spirit," "monster," and "god" were less evident.
Monsters in fiction[edit]
Prose fiction[edit]
The history of monsters in fiction is long. For instance, Grendel in the epic poem Beowulf is an archetypal monster: deformed, brutal, and with enormous strength, he raids a human settlement nightly to slay and feed on his victims. The modern literary monster has its roots in examples such as the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the vampire in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Monsters are a staple of fantasy fiction, horror fiction, and science fiction (where the monsters are often extraterrestrial in nature). There also exists monster erotica, a subgenre of erotic fiction that involves monsters.
