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--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes 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, Gog and Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, 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 of rational 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, and insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure and more ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters--and thereby avoid becoming one.
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"A comprehensive modern-day bestiary."--The New Yorker
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Extraordinary Beings
Part 1 - Ancient Monsters
1 Alexander Fights Monsters in India
2 Monsters Are Nature's Playthings
3 Hermaphrodites and Man-headed Oxen
4 Monstrous Desire
Part 2 - Medieval Monsters: Messages from God
5 Biblical Monsters
6 Do Monsters Have Souls?
7 The Monster Killer
8 Possessing Demons and Witches
Part 3 - Scientific Monsters: The Book of Nature is Riddled with Typos
9 Natural History, Freaks, and Nondescripts
10 The Medicalization of Monsters
11 Darwin's Mutants
Part 4 - Inner Monsters: The Psychological Aspects
12 The Art of Human Vulnerability: Angst and Horror
13 Criminal Monsters: Psychopathology, Aggression, and the Malignant Heart
Part 5 - Monsters Today and Tomorrow
14 Torturers, Terrorists, and Zombies: The Products of Monstrous Societies
15 Future Monsters: Robots, Mutants, and Posthuman Cyborgs
Epilogue
Notes
Index
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an erudite yet very readable monster-fest.
"Monsters literal and metaphorical are dissected with skill and
discernment in philosopher and scholar Asma's penetrating "unnatural
history." Erudite, funny, and deeply attuned to the profound
psychological and moral implications of monstrousness, Asma encompasses
the mystical and the scientific as he ponders the simultaneous repulsion
and attraction monsters arouse... Asma is insightful and entertaining
in his discussion of monsters of the deep, supernatural doppelgangers,
zombies, and vampires, and intense in his discussion of Freud and the
'science of monstrous feelings...' Asma's far-reaching book of
monsterology is original, captivating, and profoundly elucidating."--Booklist starred review
"With insight, erudition, and humor, Asma's compendium of
monsterology traces the evolving meanings and manifestations of monsters
since antiquity, in religion, philosophy, science, literature, popular
culture, and the human psyche. To explain the eternal attraction and
repulsion of the monstrous, Asma draws on material from Aristotle to
nanotechnology, revealing myriad, surprising ways that supernatural,
natural, and metaphorical monsters inhabit the landscape of our
imagination."--Adrienne Mayor, author of The First Fossil Hunters and The Poison King
"On Monsters is a humorously
omnivorous consideration of the monstrous. It's a delightful book, a
terrific balance of scholarship and wonder."--Audrey Niffenegger, author
of The Time Traveler's Wife
"A wide-ranging exploration of fear and evil, Asma's presentation
and theories are original and practical, depicting those dark, repulsive
notions of an unstable, turbulent world in which everybody must
struggle to remain human and civilized." --Publishers Weekly
"A comprehensive modern-day bestiary."--New Yorker
"Cleverly conceived and slyly written...I have seldom read a book
that so satisfyingly achieves such an ambitious goal... His new book is a
feast." --Washington Post
"Spelunking adventure through the caverns of world history, culture and thought." --Chicago Sun-Times
"Asma has a lucid, engaging style, and he uses it to provide a
thoughtfully breezy survey of the bizarre and the lurking." --Chicago Reader
In his new book, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Columbia College lecturer Stephen Asma lays out a frightful and compelling bestiary." --Time Out Chicago
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Selling point: Zombies, vampires, and other paranormal creatures are hot topic in popular and literary culture
Selling point: Vividly illustrated, including some of the author's own drawings
Selling point: Engaging narrative style
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Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds the title of Distinguished Scholar.
Selling point: Zombies, vampires, and other paranormal creatures are hot topic in popular and literary culture
Selling point: Vividly illustrated, including some of the author's own drawings
Selling point: Engaging narrative style
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780199798094
Publisert
2011
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press Inc
Vekt
505 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
34 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
368
Forfatter