Ildikó Limpár - The Truths of Monsters: Coming of Age with Fantastic Media

Although literary monsters have occupied the space of fiction ever since we have been writing and reading literature, only a few decades ago did scholars start to focus on the specific issue of monsters and monstrosity, feeling the need to provide a theoretical framework that would allow systematic study in the field. Research in the Gothic and, relatedly, in psychoanalysis is the foundation for modern monster theory. As a result, early interpretations of the literary monster focused primarily on the psychoanalytical aspects of the monster as metaphor, making use of especially Sigmund Freuds concept of the uncanny, Carl Gustav Jungs theory of archetypes and the notion of the abject as explained by Julia Kristeva. This psychoanalytical approach was completed and turned into a more comprehensive theory in 1996, when Jeffrey Jerome Cohen looked into the cultural signification of monsters, extending Foucaults idea that each age has its privileged forms of monsters ( Abnormal 66), since monstrosity is constructed by societys norms defined by its laws. With Cohens openly Foucauldian Monster Culture (Seven Theses), the study of monsters received a new boost: Cohen gave a name to the discipline (Weinstock, Introduction 29) and provided a firm reference point for scholars in the field. Due to the impact of this concise essay on the defining characteristics of monsters, the cultural-historical interpretations of the monstrous have come into the foreground. This approach has prompted the work of important scholars, such as Stephen T. Asma, who in his monograph On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (2009) mapped how the concept of monster has evolved in the Western imagination; and this is also the approach Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui embrace in their Introduction to Monster Culture in the 21 st Century (2013), where the authors offer a theoretical framework combining three approaches that may effectively be used in monster scholarship: the psychoanalytical, the representational, which is historically conditioned (5), and the ontological. Levina and Buis claim that monster narratives offer a space where society can safely represent and address anxieties of its time (1) clearly echoes Cohens first thesis on monsters, which considers the monsters body as the embodiment of a certain cultural momentof a time, a feeling, and a place, that is, a cultural body (Monster 4).

In the past two and half decades, Monster Studies has established itself as a very diverse and dynamically developing branch of literary scholarship that fruitfully aligns with various disciplines from Social Sciences through Gothic Studies to Film Studies, as, for instance, the recently published The Monster Theory Reader (2020), edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, demonstrates. Researchers of the Gothic and Horror have long been examining the relationship between child characters and the monstrous, but their focus has mostly been on the representation of the evil and thus monstrous child, or innocent children as the antithesis to and ultimate victims of the monstrous, while they have paid little attention to the ubiquitous presence of the monstrous and the specific roles of monsters in fantasies intended for adolescent readership. The present book, therefore, aims to start filling this gap in the study of the monstrous. Monsters seem to be perfect tools for writing about various aspects of coming of age, which is a major theme of adolescent literature. The reason for this connection between metaphorical monstrosity and youth literature, which discusses the problematics of growing up, lies in the common and related characteristics of the two concepts.