Primary Sources on Monsters

Asa Simon Mittman is Professor and Chair of Art & Art History at California State University, Chico. Marcus Hensel is Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College, Kansas.

The sections of this source reader are organized in chronological order from Western antiquity to the 21st century. Spanning a stretch of over 4000 years, the collection begins with The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2000 BCE) and ends with contemporary monster fictions circulated online. [...] Mittman and Hensel have assembled an essential source reader in the field with a necessary range of texts. With the vast timespan of the volume’s entries, in no way could this source accommodate a fully comprehensive collection of monsters in lore, myth, and literature. However, major developments and defining works of Western monster culture are represented through the selections in Primary Sources on Monsters.

• 1. The Battle of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and Humbaba, from The Epic of Gilgamesh2. The Nephilim, Goliath, Behemoth and Leviathan, and The Beasts of the Apocalypse, from the Bible3. Selections from Theogony by Hesiod4. Odysseus and His Men Encounter the Cyclops, from The Odyssey by Homer5. Bust of Polyphemus6. Monstrous Peoples and Beasts, from The Natural History by Pliny the Elder7. Lycaon and Cadmus, from Metamorphoses by Ovid8. Selections from City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo9. The Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley) 10. Wonders of the East11. Illuminations of the Donestre, Huntress, and Boar-Tusked Women from Wonders of the East12. Introduction, Fight with Grendel, the Attack by Grendel's Mother, Fight with Grendel's Mother, and Fight with the Dragon, from Beowulf 13. Modern Images of Grendel by J. H. Frederick Bacon, Julio Castro, Leonard Baskin, and Gareth Hinds14. Bisclavret by Marie de France 15. Völsunga saga (Saga of the Volsungs)16. The Life of St. Christopher17. Illumination of Saint Christopher 18. The Alliterative Morte Arthure19. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 20. On Monsters by Ambroise Paré21. Illustrations of Figure of a Foal with a Human Head; Portrait of a Marvelous Monster; Example of Too Large a Quantity of Semen; Figure of two twin girls, joined together by the posterior parts; Figure of a man from whose belly another man issued, from Ambroise Paré, On Monsters22. Selections from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser23. Selections from The Tempest by William Shakespeare24. Images of Caliban by John Hamilton Mortimer and Charles A. Buchel25. A Discourse Concerning Prodigies: Wherein the Vanity of Presages by them is Reprehended, and their True and Proper Ends are Indicated by John Spencer26. Selections from Paradise Lost by John Milton27. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 28. Frontispiece to Frankenstein by Theodor Richard Edward von Holst29. "William Wilson" by Edgar Allan Poe30. "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti31. Illustration of Buy From Us With Golden Curl engraved by Charles Faulkner after design by Dante Gabriel Rossetti32. "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll33. Illustration of Jabberwocky by John Tenniel34. "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce35. Selections from Dracula by Bram Stoker36. Frontispiece to Bram Stoker, Dracula by "Nathan"37. "Ancient Sorceries" by Algernon Blackwood38. "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft39. Sketch of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft40. "Shambleau" by C.L. Moore41. Trolls and Smaug, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien42. "It" by Theodore Sturgeon43. "Fever Dream" by Ray Bradbury44. "The Faceless Thing" by Edward D. Hoch45. Selections from Grendel by John Gardner46. "Secret Observations on the Goat-Girl" by Joyce Carol Oates47. Selections from Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood48. Slender Man49. SCP (Special Containment Procedures) Foundation