INTRODUCTION: “A MARVEL OF MONSTERS” ASA SIMON MITTMAN and MARCUS HENSEL Under the Werewolf’s Skin curse, but the source of this curse is rarely spelled out in such Gerald of Wales, a priest1 and writer active in Britain around Many werewolf narratives imply that the monstrosity is a 1200 CE, tells a curious tale of “some astonishing things that happened in our times.” He has heard the story of another detail. This cursed werewolf then explains that he and his priest travelling through Ireland with only a boy as his wife are this cursed pair, and that she, trapped in the shape of companion. They are sitting around a campfire, beneath a tree, a wolf, is dying and needs a priest to attend to her last rites. 4 Then, as Gerald tells when a wolf approaches them. Naturally, they are afraid, but “The priest follows trembling,” but is hesitant to provide a the wolf then speaks to them with a human voice, telling them mass and absolution for a talking wolf. 2 The priest is, nonetheless, to have no fear. The wolf even “added sensible words about us, “to cleanse any doubt, his foot performing as a hand, [the astonished and afraid: he and his young assistant are alone from the head to the navel and folded it back; and the clear God” to further reassure him. male wolf] pulled back the entire skin of the [female] wolf in the woods with a supernatural creature, a wolf that speaks form of an old5 woman appeared […] He immediately rolled like a man. The wolf then tells the priest his story: the skin of the wolf back on, and joined it together in its 6 though Gerald does not specify the pre seven years, by the curse of a certain saint, Abbot prior form.” The priest then agrees—“compelled more by We are of the kin of the people of Ossory. Thus, every cise cause of this fear—to perform the last rites for her. As terror than reason,” ­ form, are exiled from the boundaries of other people. Natalis, two people, male and female, both in this Caroline Walker Bynum asks in her book on Gerald and medi­ eval ideas about transformation, “did the priest improperly years,Stripping if theyoff the survive, form of they the humanreturn completely,to their former they put on a wolfish form. At the end of the space of seven give the Eucharist,” that is, in Catholicism, the miraculously transformed body and blood of Jesus, “to a wolf or properly their place, in the same condition. 7 country and nature, and two others3 are chosen in comfort a dying if deformed ‘human’?” embedded in this strange tale, but for our purposes here, the What do we take from this? There are many lessons 1 Geraldi Cambrensis, Opera, vol. 5, Topographia Hibernica, et Expug­ natio Hibernica 4 Geraldi Cambrensis, Opera , ed. James F. Dimock (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867), 101: “Nunc ea, quae nostris hic temporibus , 102: “presbyter sequitur treme­ ours. 5 Geraldi Cambrensis, Opera digna stupore contigerunt, explicemus.” Translations from Gerald are bundus.” Geraldi Cambrensis, 2 Opera , 102–3: “Et ut omnem abstergeret Geraldi Cambrensis, 3 Opera, 101: “verba de Deo sana subjunxit.” dubietatem, pede quasi pro manu fungens, pellem totam a capite lupae retrahens, usque ad umbilicum replicavit: et statim expressa , 102: “De quodam hominum genere forma vetulae cujusdam apparuit […] Et statim pellis, a lupo retracta, sumus Ossiriensium. Unde, quolibet septennio, per imprecationem Geraldi Cambrensis, priori6 se formpe coaptavit.”Opera sancti cujusdam, Natalis scilicet abbatis, duo, videlicet mas et femina, prorsus exuentes, induunt lupinam. Completo vero septennii spatio, si tam a formis quam finibus exulare coguntur. Formam enim humanam , 103: “terrore tamen magis quam forte superstites fuerint, aliis duobus ipsorum loco simili conditione ratione7 compulsus.” Metamorphosis and Identity Caroline Walker Bynum, (New York: subrogatis, ad pristinam redeunt tam patriam quam naturam.” Zone Books, 2001), 27. x a sa simOn mittman and marcus hensel key one is this: inside every monster lurks a human being. variety and range of sources in this volume, we hope to give Peel back the fur, carefully and thoughtfully at them, and, ultimately, to see Hence, werewolves “retain in (or under) wolfishness the the monsters their due, to do our duty towards them, to look the scales, the spikes, the slime, and beneath8 the monstrous rapaciousness or courtesy of human selves.” hide, there we them and understand what they strive to demonstrate for us. On the Shoulders of Giants are, always and9 inevitably. This is because all monsters are human creations. They exist because we create or define them as such. We therefore owe them our care and attention. We must not follow the model of Doctor When Isaac Newton famously noted that he stood “on the Frankenstein, who gives life to a creature he then rejects with shoulders of giants,” what he meant was that he did not have disgust. The Monster implores the doctor—and we would be to invent all of his ideas out of nothing. Indeed, Newton bor­ wise to heed this admonition: rowed this clever line used to describe how he relied on the work of others from an earlier author, perhaps the twelfth­ All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, century bishop of Chartres, France, John of Salisbury, who who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of cites Bernard of Chartres as his source; this is how scholar­ creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou ship works, with long chains of authors building on—and hopefully crediting!—one another’s work. In John’s (or one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare10 you sport Bernard’s) version, there are two monstrous figures, with he thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do In this short phrase, these various authors both and his contemporaries as “dwarfs perched on the shoulders mine towards you and the rest of mankind. humble themselves13 and of giants.” Monsters do perform important work for us as individuals and denigrate “dwarfs,” also elevating and mores through their inversions and transgressions. communities, policing our boundaries, defining our norms those they respect by comparing them to “giants.” monster theorists and the monsters they unleash or attempt In assembling this collection, we are working to celebrate ourselves. Through their bodies, words, and deeds, monsters show us to contain—each of which perches atop the previous creation, Classic Readings on Monster Theory and Primary This is not a new insight. In the early fifth century, Saint building the canon. We have organized the larger work into Sources on Monsters Augustine, an early Christian bishop of the North African two volumes: city of Hippo, uses a series of Latin puns to characterize . The first volume is a contribution to the monstra, from monstrare demonstrare (to the nature of monsters. He says they take their11 name, field of “monster theory” and the second to “monster studies.” (to show) in order These terms have each been in use for about twenty years, demonstrate) something that we can learn from. While we but it is really only in the last five or so that they have gained Jeffrey Jerome Cohen for his 1996 collection of essays, Mon­ might draw different conclusions about what lessons they much traction. “Monster theory” is a term that was coined by from monsters. They are, as Julia Kristeva says in a related ster Theory: Reading Culture teach, we agree with Augustine that we have much to learn 12 By gathering a great academic sources that provide methods for considering mon , and we use it here to refer to context, “the primers of my culture.” ­ the monstrous function in various contexts. 8 sters, approaches to them, ways of seeing how monsters and 9 Bynum, 32. The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and Asa Simon Mittman, “Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Conceiving of our work as “monster theory” or “monster the Monstrous Monster Studies,” in studies” involves adopting a fairly recent critical lens, and , ed. Asa Simon Mittman with Peter Dendle (London: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome most of the material specifically and sustainedly dealing with Ashgate, 2012), 1–14; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven monsters has been written after 1980. Indeed, one might Theses),” in volume 1 of this collection. argue that monster theory in its present form would not be Cohen (Minneapolis: Uni ver sity of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3–25, and 10 Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prome­ possible without the advent of postmodern theory: the roots theus Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, of monster theory, like the closely allied fields of postcolonial Augustine, , in volume 2 of this collection. 11 , in volumeCity 2 of of this God collection, 179. 13 The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A 12 Twelfth­Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium Daniel D. McGarry, trans., collection. Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection,” in volume 1 of this (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967), 167. xi ”IntrOductiOn: “a marvel Of mOnsters and queer theory, lie in the post­structuralism of Michel 1968 brought a sea change in Western thought. After Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean­François Lyotard. A full the student protests in Poland and France, and the growth scholars began to look at literature (and therefore monsters) explanation of post­structuralism lies far beyond the scope of of Civil Rights and antiwar movements in the United States, this chapter, but suffice it to say that this new way of thinking Arguing questioned the universality of Enlightenment ideals—the differently.