Monsters and Others in Medieval Literature and Culture

Module overview

Monsters lurk at the edges of the medieval map and imagination. These creatures repulse, fascinate, disconcert, and challenge humans in many of medieval Europe’s most intriguing and compelling texts from Beowulf to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This module will look in detail at the roles that monsters and monstrosity play in literature, culture and thought from Early Medieval England to the fifteenth century. The module will equip you to think about how medieval people thought not just about physical monsters, but about the intersections and distinctions between medieval notions of monstrosity and constructions of gendered, racial and religious difference. You will learn to analyse how medieval texts and cultural artefacts deployed representations of monstrous -- and uncannily human -- others to define, interrogate, and trouble notions of identity and community.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

A range of key texts and cultural artefacts from medieval England and the European Middle Ages
The rhetorical and cultural uses of representations of otherness and monstrosity
Relevant theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of monstrosity and other forms of otherness in the Middle Ages
Intersections and distinctions between monstrosity and other forms of otherness in the Middle Ages

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Define and research your own essay topic on a relevant subject
Analyse representations of monsters, monstrosity and otherness across a range of literary and visual media
Identify appropriate critical and theoretical reading for a research topic
Bring appropriate theoretical and methodological reading into dialogue with literary and cultural texts

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

Design and plan a research essay
Work with feedback to complete a project of your own design

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

1 lecture per week 1 discussion-based seminar per week 1 student-led learning support hour per week This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible weekly contact hour, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Study time
Type	Hours
Seminar	10
Lecture	10
Assessment tasks	50
Guided independent study	70
Practical classes and workshops	10
Total study time	150

Resources & Reading list

Internet Resources

Different Visions: New Perspectives on Medieval Art, vol. 2: Monstrosity (Special Issue).

Digital Mappa - Old English Poetry project.

Textbooks

Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (2003). The Monstrous Middle Ages. University of Wales Press.

(1999). Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. University of Minnesota Press.

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (1996). Monster Theory: Reading Culture. University of Minnesota Press.

Asa Mittman and Peter Drendle (2013). The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Routledge.

Asa Simon Mittman (2006). Maps and Monsters in Medieval England. Taylor and Francis.

Assessment

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay proposal	10%
Essay	90%

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	100%

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Essay	100%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External