Syllabus: Medieval Monsters

Zsuzsanna Reed
Central European University Vienna

The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of
intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to
issues of moral, theological, and cultural value. Monstrosity is bound up with questions
of body image and deformity, nature and knowledge, hybridity, and horror. To explore a
culture’s attitudes to the monstrous is to comprehend one of its most important symbolic
tools. (Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills, The Monstrous Middle Ages, 2003) While we
will be looking at medieval European monsters and monster lore, as well as modern
scholarship that grapples with them, it is inevitable (and encouraged) to venture further
afield temporally and geographically.

Reading assignments include medieval saints’ lives, romances, sermons, chronicles,

and visual narratives of monsters and heroes in manuscripts and maps.

Blended course, synchronous online classes with some asynchronous elements.

Learning outcomes
By the end of this course you will
• be familiar with key theories of monstrosity
• apply that knowledge to the interpretation of literary and visual sources
• be able to analyze how texts that engage with monstrosity, and reflect cultural
values and the boundaries of human identity
• break through the alterity of medieval primary sources and discover their
cultural relevance through a universal theme
• find ways in which studying medieval literature and literary criticism can help
you improve your analysis of texts and become a better writer
• learn a lot about cool monsters

To accommodate asynchronous learning during the pandemic, all seminars are accompanied by detailed
Powerpoint presentations, available for the entire duration of the course.

Basic netiquette to be observed during Zoom classes. Please honor the classroom space by actively
exhibiting respect and compassion for all races, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and
economic backgrounds.

Please be informed that the seminars will be recorded by the Department of Medieval Studies and
shared via Panopto where you and all other participants of the course can watch it for one week.
After that date, the recording will be deleted. During the recording your image or voice might be
recorded, the data processing resulting from the recording is based on CEU’s legitimate interest.
The Department of Medieval Studies publishes the recording of the lecture with no modifications.
 I. INTRO
1. Teratology, monster theory

• Bryant, B. L., and Asa Simon Mittman. “Travels of The Blemmye-Folke’: A

Previously Unknown Middle English Poem in The Collection of Miskatonic
University.” Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture, 2017,
117–26.

2. Asynchronous Class + Exercise

VIDEO: The Monstrous Other in Medieval Art

https://www.themorgan.org/videos/monstrous-other-medieval-art
Exercise: Group commentary feed

Please open the shared document when you watch the lecture and make notes as you
go. Feel free to rewatch and look up things, feel free to add your own thoughts or
examples: it’s your sandbox. The goal is an outline of the lecture written by the entire
group together.
This is an asynchronous exercise, which means you can get started at your own leisure,
but every row should have something under your name (either note or your own
comment) by 24 January.

Recommended reading: Lindquist, Sherry C. M., Asa Simon Mittman, and China
Miéville. Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders. New York: The Morgan Library
& Museum in association with D. Giles, 2018.
 II. Where are the Monsters?

3. Maps

Primary:
• John of Mandeville and the Hereford Map, Historia Cartarum,
https://historiacartarum.org/john-mandeville-and-the-hereford-map-2/

Secondary:
• Mittman, Asa Simon. Maps and Monsters in Medieval England. Studies in
Medieval History and Culture. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006. 11-59.

Recommended:
• Medieval Map Quiz, Medievalists.net, https://www.medievalists.net/2014/10/quiz-
medieval-maps/
• Simek, Rudolf. “Völundarhús - Domus Daedali Labyrinths in Old Norse
Manuscripts.” Nowele: North-Western European Language Evolution 21–22 (April
1, 1993): 323–68.

4. Visual representations

Secondary:
• Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London:
Reaktion, 1992), pp. 9-10; 77-97.
• Ch 2, "Materials for an Epidemiology of Culture," in Wengrow, David. The Origins
of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
The Rostovtzeff Lectures. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Recommended:
• Camille, Michael, Zeynep Çelik, John Onians, Adrian Rifkin, and Christopher B.
Steiner. “Rethinking the Canon.” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 2 (1996): 198–217.

5. Texts

Primary:
• Cotton MS Vitellius A XV:
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_vitellius_a_xv
 • Orchard, Andy, ed. “Appendix IIc: The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle; A
Translation of the Old English Text.” In Pride and Prodigies, 225–53. Studies in the
Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Secondary:
• Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London:
Reaktion, 1992), pp. 9-10; 11-55.
• Orchard, Andy, ed. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf
Manuscript. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Recommended:
• Tyler, Tom. “Deviants, Donestre, and Debauchees: Here Be Monsters.” Culture,
Theory and Critique 49, no. 2 (October 2008): 113–31.
 III. What makes them monstrous?

6. Race and location

Primary:
• Augustine, City of God, Book XVI, Chapter 8; (available online)
• Orchard, Andy, ed. “Appendix Ic: The Wonders of the East; A Translation of the
Old English Text.” In Pride and Prodigies, 185–203. Studies in the Monsters of the
Beowulf Manuscript. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. (See manuscript
illustrations online)

Secondary:
• Miraculous Bleach and Giant Feet: Were Medieval People Racist? II
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/miraculous-
bleach/?fbclid=IwAR3012zSlXaBLRFxx0LkC4G7kGH0EAOKDulIbsmrzzrDqq5wq9
KbXnghqvU
• Strickland, Debra Higgs. “Monstrosity and Race in the Late Middle Ages.” In The
Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa
Simon Mittman, 1st ed., 365–86. Routledge, 2017.
• Greta Austin, “Marvelous Peoples or Marvelous Races? Race and the Anglo-
Saxon Wonders of the East,” in Marvels, Monsters and Miracles; Studies in the
Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. Timothy S. Jones and David A.
Sprunger. Western Michigan University Press, 2002: 25-51.

Recommended:
• Mandeville’s Travels (Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 15); Mandeville’s Travels
(Chapters 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 29, 31, 32, and “Mandeville’s Farewell”
• Mittman, Asa Simon, and Susan M. Kim. “Ungefraegelicu Deor: Truth and the
Wonders of the East.” Different Visions 2, no. Monstrosity (2010).
https://differentvisions.org/project/issue-two-monstrosity/.
• Ratramnus of Corbie. “Ratramnus and the Dog-Headed Humans.” In Carolingian
Civilization: A Reader, edited by Paul Edward Dutton, 452–55. Readings in
Medieval Civilizations and Cultures 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
• Estes, Heide. “Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East.” English
Studies 91, no. 4 (2010): 360–73.
 • “Circulation and Transformation: The Monstrous Feminine in Mandeville’s
Travels,” in Oswald, Dana. Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English
Literature, 116-158, Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2010.
• Geraldine Heng at the September 2019 "Race and Periodization" symposium,
Folger Institute and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies:
https://www.folger.edu/institute/scholarly-programs/race-periodization/geraldine-
heng
• Natalie Rose Cox, “Of Mountains and Monsters: The Eco, the Gothic, and the
EcoGothic: Literature and Photography,”
https://ofmountainsandmonsters.wordpress.com/

7. Metamorphosis and transgression: Werewolves

Primary:
• Marie de France. “The Lais of Marie de France.” Translated by Judy Shoaf.
Accessed January 15, 2021. https://people.clas.ufl.edu/jshoaf/marie_lais/.
• Part II, ch. 52. "The wonderful happenings of our own time; and first about a wolf
that talked with a priest." In Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of
Ireland, trans. John O’Meara, Penguin Classics 86 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
2006) or
• Ch. 19 in Giraldus Cambrensis, The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis,
Containing The Topography of Ireland and The History of the Conquest of Ireland,
ed. Thomas Wright and Richard Colt Hoare, trans. Thomas Forester, Bohn’s
Antiquarian Library (London: George Bell & sons, 1905), 44-46.

Secondary:
• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “The Werewolf’s Indifference.” Studies in the Age of
Chaucer 34 (2012): 351–56.
• Bynum, Caroline Walker. "Metamorphosis or Gerald and the Werewolf. In
Metamorphosis and Identity. New York: Zone Books, 2001.
• Steel, Karl. “Got Your Nose: Bisclavret Defaces His Wife.” In the Medieval
Middle, n.d. https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2012/06/got-your-nose-
bisclavret-defaces-his.html.

Recommended:
• Youngs, Deborah, and Simon Harris. “Demonizing the Night in Medieval Europe:
A Temporal Monstrosity?” In The Monstrous Middle Ages, edited by Bettina
Bildhauer and Robert Mills, 134–54. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
• Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Shape and Story; Metamorphosis in the Western
Tradition; the 1999 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, March 22, 1999).”
National Endowment for the Humanities, n.d. https://www.neh.gov/news/press-
release/1999-03-22.
• Recommended public lecture: The IMS at the University of Leeds and the Leeds
Centre for Jewish Studies co-hosting the Selig Brodetsky Memorial Lecture: Asa
S. Mittman (California State University-Chico): Far From Jerusalem: The Exclusion
of Jews on Christian Maps Link
 8. Disability, deformity: Dwarves and pigmies

Primary:
• Maloney, Kara Larson. “Evadeam, The Dwarf Knight from the Lancelot-Grail
Cycle.” In Medieval Disability Sourcebook: Western Europe, edited by Cameron
Hunt McNabb, 365–78. Earth, Milky Way: punctum Books, 2020.
• Ch. 22: "How men know by the Idol, if the sick shall die or not. Of Folk of diverse
shape and marvellously disfigured. And of the Monks that gave their relief to
baboons, apes, and marmosets, and to other beasts." In The Travels of Sir John
Mandeville, the version of the Cotton Manuscript in modern spelling. London:
Macmillan: 1900. Pp. 196-198. (pp 133-139 in
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/782/782-h/782-h.htm)

Recommended:
• Campbell, Mary B. “‘That Othere Half’: Mandeville Naturalizes the East.” In The
Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600, 122–61.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
• Seymour, Michael Charles. “1. Sir John Mandeville.” In Authors of the Middle
Ages English Writers of the Late Middle Ages, 1:1–64. Aldershot: Variorum, 1994.
• Chapter 3: "Perfect Miniatures." In Ghadessi, Touba. Portraits of Human
Monsters in the Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati as Idealized
Anatomical Anomalies. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western
Michigan University, 2017. Pp. 53-97.
• Public lecture: Christopher Baswell - Research Focus Group Talk: Kings and
Cripples in the Arthurian World: Interdisciplinary Humanities Center University of
California, Santa Barbara March 5, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm GMT on Zoom

9. Hibridity: Hermaphrodites

TW: some of the material may have explicit passages or images of sexual nature

Primary:
• Book 11: "The human being and portents." In Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies
of Isidore of Seville. Edited by Stephen A. Barney. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
• Orchard, Andy, ed. “Appendix IIIb: Liber Monstrorum.” In Pride and Prodigies,
255–317. Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1995.

Secondary:
• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory:
Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3–25. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996.
• Resnick, Irven M. “Albert the Great on Nature and the Production of
Hermaphrodites: Theoretical and Practical Considerations.” Traditio 74 (2019):
307–34.
Recommended:
• Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, 31.126 (not available in English
translation)
• Verner, Lisa. “Medieval Monsters, in Theory and Practice.” Medicina Nei Secoli
Arte e Scienza: Journal of History of Medicine 26, no. 1 (2014): 43–68.
• Hans Voorbij and Eva Albrecht, A Vincent of Beauvais website:
http://www.vincentiusbelvacensis.eu/works/works1.html
• Guidotto, Nadia. “Monsters in the Closet: Biopolitics and Intersexuality.” Wagadu:
Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies 4: Intersecting Gender and
Disability Perspectives (2008): 66–86. (Google Books)
• Long, Kathleen Perry. “Hermaphrodites Newly Discovered: The Cultural
Monsters of Sixteenth-Century France.” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture,
edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 183–200. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1996.
• Sharpe, Andrew N. “England’s Legal Monsters.” Law, Culture and the Humanities
5, no. 1 (2009): 100–130.

10. Colour: Green

Primary:
• William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum,
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/williamofnewburgh-one.asp#27

Secondary:
• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Green Children from Another World, or the Archipelago
in England.” In Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island,
England, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 75–94. The New Middle Ages. New
York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Clark, John. “‘Small, Vulnerable ETs’: The Green Children of Woolpit.” Science
Fiction Studies 33, no. 2 (2006): 209–29.
• Brewer, Derek. “The Colour Green.” In A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, edited
by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, 181–90. Arthurian Studies 38.
Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1997.

Recommended:
• Clark, John. “Martin and the Green Children: Topics, Notes and Comments.”
Folklore 117, no. 2 (2006): 207–14.
• "Rare green puppy ‘Pistachio’ born in Italy," BBC, 22 October 2020,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54650901

11. Abjection and the Holy Monstrous: Zombies – death in life, life in death

TW: some of the material may have explicit passages or images of sexual or
graphic nature, as well as representations of mental illness
Primary:
• Thomas de Cantimpré. The Life of Christina the Astonishing. Edited by David
Wiljer. Translated by Margot H. King. Toronto: Peregrina, 1999. (pdf)

Secondary:
• Spencer-Hall, A. “The Horror of Orthodoxy: Christina Mirabilis, Thirteenth-
Century ‘Zombie’ Saint.” Postmedieval 8 (2017): 352–75. (pdf)
• Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S.
Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Recommended:
• Murrielle Michaud, “A meruelous thinge!”: Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina the
Astonishing, and Performative Self-Abjection in Oxford, Bodleian Astonishing, and
Performative Self-Abjection in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 Library,
MS Douce 114, Wilfrid Laurier University Wilfrid Laurier University 2018. (pdf)
• Quade, Kirstin Valdez. “Christina the Astonishing (1150-1224).” New Yorker, July
24, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/christina-the-
astonishing-1150-1224.
• Nick Cave, Christina the Astonishing,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ86DlemOWQ

12. Abjection, consumption, horror: Consumption and nourishment

Primary:
• Ivo of Narbonne about his travels and eyewitness account, illustration of a
cannibal feast in Matthew Paris, Chronica majora
• MS B, fols 166v col. b - 167v col. b. Illustration on 167r.
https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/qt808nj0703
• Matthew Paris. Matthæi Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora.
Vol. 4. 7 vols. Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores. London: Longman,
1882. Pp. 270–77.
• Matthew Paris. Matthew Paris’s English History, from 1235 to 1273. Translated
by J. A. Giles. Vol. 1. 3 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852. Pp. 467–73.

Secondary:
• Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S.
Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
• Blurton, Heather. Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
• Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender
and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Pp 161-
164.

Recommended:
 • Reineke, Martha J. “‘This Is My Body’: Reflections on Abjection, Anorexia, and
Medieval Women Mystics.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58, no. 2
(1990): 245–65.
• McAvoy, Liz Herbert, and Teresa Walters. Consuming Narratives: Gender and
Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 2002.

*TRIGGER WARNING images of blood, wounds, repulsion*

• Sharpe, Rachel Frances, and Sophie Sexon. “Mother’s Milk and Menstrual Blood
in Puncture: The Monstrous Feminine in Contemporary Horror Films and Late
Medieval Imagery.” Studies in the Maternal 10, no. 1 (2018): 10.
https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.256.
 ASSIGNMENTS

1. BYOM – Bring Your Own Monster (40% of your overall grade)

Find another student for pairwork and together prepare a pre-recorded 10-minute
presentation about a monster that fits one of the thematic classes (classes 6-12). Zoom,
prezi video, tiktok, any other medium acceptable.
Please have a look at the case study we’ll discuss in the class (see syllabus below) and
choose a different example/examples than the one prescribed there (e.g. if you choose
“colour,” find something other than green). Case studies from beyond Western Europe
are welcome.
Develop a ‘research space’ where you drop readings, links, podcasts, films, music
about your monster. Feel free to do so for others too!

2. End-term paper, 2000 words (50% of overall grade)

Choose a topic: a or b or c.

a. Monsters in text: Medieval/Modern

In “Shape and Story,” Caroline Walker Bynum examines Bisclavret (twelfth-century)
alongside Ovid’s Metamorphosis (fourth-century) and Angela Carter’s The Bloody
Chamber (twentieth-century). Kristi Wilson’s “Cross-Cultural Othering through
Metamorphosis” is a similarly reaches across nearly two millennia comparing the
narrative structures of Clive Barker’s 1987 film, Hellraiser, and Apuleius’s second-
century The Golden Ass, to provide evidence for pre-nineteenth-century “othering
machines.”
Inspired by such exercises, for this assignment choose a non-medieval or modern text
about monsters (NOT the obvious Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, etc.; and
NOT a movie, TV show, video game) alongside a medieval text about monsters.1 Write
a close reading of BOTH texts that illuminates them in some significant, argument-
driven way. Do not simply summarise/compare/contrast—make an argument about their
larger significance, the nature of monstrosity in literature (its consistencies, changes,
paradoxes, or paradigms), the representation of monstrous bodies/beings, or the
guiding principles of “monster theory” that illuminate both texts. In addition to your two
primary sources, you should include cited references to 5-7 secondary sources. You
may want to bring in some of the secondary, more theoretical readings about
monstrosity that we have read: Cohen, Bynum, Kristeva, any of the other
supplementary readings; and of course, your own researched sources.

1
I am grateful to Ellis Light (Fordham) for the template for these assignments and source suggestions.
b. Visual representation of monsters: Inside and Outside Europe
In “Images of the Wildman Inside and Outside Europe,” Gregory Forth overviews non-
European connections and manifestations of the ‘wild man’ monstrous character familiar
from medieval European sources.2 Inspired by this kind of cross-cultural, global
approach, for this assignment choose a non-European representation of monsters
(preferably pre-modern, if possible) that can be in some ways compared to a medieval
European monster or an aspect of monstrosity we have discussed through medieval
European examples in the course, e.g. race,3 gender and sexuality, colour, hybridity,
transformation, disability, etc. Do not simply describe/compare/contrast—make an
argument about their larger significance, the nature of monstrosity in art (its
consistencies, changes, paradoxes, or paradigms), the representation of monstrous
bodies/beings, or the guiding principles of “monster theory” that illuminate both types of
representations. You should include cited references to 5-7 secondary sources. You
may want to bring in some of the secondary, more theoretical readings about
monstrosity that we have read, any of the other supplementary readings; and of course,
your own researched sources.

c. Revisiting an old paper: researched and re-imagined

Revisit the topics and ideas of an older paper using the dimensions and paradigms of
monstrosity discussed in this course. This is not a revision per se but re-imagining a
field or topic you previously explored, reconceptualizing it, and perhaps arriving at new
conclusions.
Your research should be directed towards developing this revised/reimagined argument,
either on a theoretical level (i.e., texts of literary/cultural theory, philosophy, or
methodology), or as your sources relate to your specific text (i.e., articles that analyze
similar questions alongside the text you yourself have chosen — be sure to situate your
own position in response to these outside arguments). In addition to your primary
source(s), you should include cited references to 5-7 secondary sources.
Your new paper must be at least 50% new material. This should include
significant, extensive expansions of your original paper (please submit original
paper, though it will not at all factor in the evaluation of the new essay). Your
argument should not be exactly the same as the original: you must revise, revisit,
or completely reimagine your argument from the first paper.

2
Gregory Forth, “Images of the Wildman Inside and Outside Europe,” Folklore 118, no. 3 (2007): 261–81
3
Recommended: Kumkum Chatterjee and Clement Hawes, eds., Europe Observed: Multiple Gazes in Early Modern
Encounters, Aperçus (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2008).