LIT 3112-02 - Fall 2026 - Hand

In Humans: A Monstrous History (UC Press, 2025), Surekha Davies writes, “There are no monsters, but all of them are real. This is a book about monster-making: the stories societies tell about who they think isn’t normal or typical—the process of defining people as something outside normal categories, as something monstrous. . . What real and fictional monsters share is a capacity to challenge or transcend ideas about typical bodies or behavior. Monsters are category breakers” (2). Our course, a survey of Anglophone literary development from the fall of the Roman empire to 1800, takes its cue from Davies’s description. While reading foundational texts and acquainting ourselves with important authors, genres, conventions, and contexts, we’ll have opportunities to think about monster-making, focusing our critical lens on where and how monsters appear and to what ends. What vision of “the human” emerges in contract to the monsters of our literary history? From Beowulf’s Grendel, to the title werewolf of Marie de France’s Bisclavret, Shakespeare’s Caliban and beyond, how are monsters and notions of the monstrous intertwined with the foundations of the Western literary canon and humanist ideals? Meets the LMC Core requirement.