Monster Theory is a collection of essays that was published in 1996, and at times it shows its age.  While its hard for me to know exactly how groundbreaking it was when it was published thirty years ago, now a lot of the concepts were things I was already aware of (mostly because I took a class on Ghosts, Monsters and Demons in 2019 which heavily influenced how I look at them). 

I, for some godforasken reason, decided to read every essay in this book, even ones where I hadn't read the primary text it was discussing.  Why?  Because I'm insane, I guess. I don't fucking know.  I only really had to read the preface and the introduction for the paper I'm intending to write.  There's a couple other essays that I thought might have touched on other papers I'm considering writing, but I learned pretty quickly that they didn't so I could have just skipped them.  Did I? No.  No, I decided to give myself extra reading, which is definitely what someone needs to give themself in a semester where they're taking five high-level English classes.  Go me, I guess  (To be fair, this was an Interlibrary Loan, and I felt bad that my library summoned it all the way from BC if I wasn't going to make full use of it.  And <i>something</i> useful might have cropped up! You never know until you try). 

There were two essays that discussed conjoined twins and birth defects, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about them being included in a collection of essays about monsters (though I recognize that historically birth defects were historically called 'monstrous births,' especially since I wrote a paper about Richard III last semester.  But I guess it was the 90s so....)

Monster Culture (Seven Theses) by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Definitely the most useful chapter in terms of my "Pirates as Monsters" term paper I intend to write. This is just seven short theses, a couple paragraphs each, and while I have absolutely nothing to base this on, I suspect that this essay is where most of Monster Theory as we know it today arose from.  I really nice overview of what monster theory is in general. 

Beowulf as Palimpsest by Ruth Waterhorse

I have read Beowulf! I read J.R.R. Tolkein's translation of it last year!  Unfortunately, most of this essay went over my head anyway. I'm definitely not a Beowulf scholar, that's for sure.  But it was still pretty interesting, comparing Beowulf's monsters to modern day monsters such as Mr Hyde and Dracula (both books I'm also reading this semester for my Horror class).  I generally enjoyed this one!

Monstrosity, Illegibility, Denegation: De Man, bp Nichol, and the Resistance to Postmodernism by David L. Clark

This essay is written in extremely difficult academic language, and is analysing a few texts which I didn't even know existed, let alone had read. It discusses the concept as language in and of itself as being a monster. It was pretty interesting, the things I was able to understand.  Unfortunately, most of this essay sailed way above my head. 

The Odd Couple: Gargantua and Tom Thumb by Anne Lake Prescott

I haven't actually read anything this essay covered, but it's basic English folklore, so like... osmosis haha.  It discusses giants and extremely tiny people (like Tom Thumb, a man as tall as a thumb), and how they're often partnered together.  I generally enjoyed this essay, and had some fun with it. It even gave me tiny plot bunnies that will probably never amount to anything but are happily hopping around in my brain anyway now.  It also, weirdly, might have given me something for an essay I may or may not write this semester; it is the only essay besides the preface and the "Seven Theses" that did.

America's "United Siamese Brothers": Chang and Eng and Nineteenth-Century Ideologies of Democracy and Domesticity by Allison Pingree

This isn't about literature per se, and more about the historical case of... well, America's first set of "Siamese Twins," conjoined twins who were whisked away from their homeland of Siam so that they could be paraded around the UK and America and shown off for money in "Freak Shows" in the early 19th century. It discusses a lot about what conjoined twins say about American ideals, such as individualism and law (at one point, one of the twins punched/assaulted someone, but they could not be arrested because the other twin was innocent, and so it was a matter of "do we let the guilty man go free or do we lock up an innocent man"), as well as family values (they both got married, but how would the American public see that?  Is it incest when they have sex with their wives if the other twin must be present? Is it homoerotic?).  Overall, it was a generally interesting essay, even if it did see Chang and Eng more as a concept than as humans. 

Liberty, Equality, Monstrosity: Revolutionizing the Family in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by David A. Hedrich Hirsch

I have also read Frankenstein! In fact, am reading it again for my Horror Class.  This was one of the essays I thought might help in one of my papers I might need to write.  But, it mostly looked at Frankenstein through a historical lens of a piece of history I know about (the French Revolution) but do not know about that particular aspect of (how it revolutionized how families were seen).  Probably interesting to someone who's both stoked on the French Revolution and <i>Frankenstein</i>, but that person is not me.

"No Monsters at the Resurrection": Inside Some Conjoined Twins by Stephen Pender

This is the second essay in this collection (seriously, why are there two essays in a book of 14 essays that is about this) that is about conjoined twins and birth defects, this time gazed at through a medieval religious lens. Didn't really interest me too much (and yet I still read the whole thing). 

Representing the Monster: Cognition, Cripples, and Other Limp Parts in Montaigne's "Des Boyteux" by Lawrence D. Kritzman

An essay about a piece of literature I've never read and know nothing about.  I read it.  Most of it flew right past because I had no idea what it was talking about.  Why am I like this?

Hermaphodites Newly Discovered: The Cultural Monsters of Sixteenth-Century France by Kathleen Perry Long

I have never read the book that this essay was about (Mostly <i>Isle des Hermaphodites</i> by Artus Thomas, though it also discusses the court of King Henri III which I knew nothing about but now know was probably extremely gay).  Despite not having read the source material, this essay was still very easy to follow and understand, and I found it extremely interesting. It discusses gender norms and societal constructs and constraints, and overall I enjoyed it quite a lot. 

Anthropometamorphosis: John Bulwer's Monsters of Cosmetology and the Science of Culture by Mary Baine Campbell

A lot about xenophobia and making other cultures monstrous through fiction.  Overall, I found it fairly interesting. 

Vampire Culture by Frank Grady

This was the second essay I thought might be an interesting resource for a paper I might write, but discovered very quickly that it did not apply, but I finished it anyway.  It starts off discussing Dracula as a discussion of capitalism, and then shifts to Interview with a Vampire (which I also have not read) as the same, plus some feminist critques as well.  Overall, fairly interesting, even if I only know of Interview with a Vampire through Cultural Osmosis.

The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders by William Sayers

I don't know anything about Viking Family Sagas, but they sound cool.  I'll admit that I didn't read this essay especially closely (it was late at night and I was tired), but from what I gleamed it seemed fairly interesting.

Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Responses to Saracen Alterity by Michael Uebel

An essay about Islam as a monster in the twelfth century.  Extremely interesting.  I wonder how or if this essay would have changed had it been written post 9/11.  Overall, I was very interested in this one.

Dinosaurs-R-Us: The (Un)Natural History of Jurassic Park by John O'Neill

Well, this guy certainly has a.... angry?  writing style which could have been interesting if I could have at all figured out what he was trying to say.  Is this a critique about capitalism? The family?  Something about abortions?  Children?  Sexuality?  I have no fucking idea.  But whatever O'Neill was trying to say, he said it with a whole lot of passion.