Abstract
[Truncated] This thesis looks at how narratives portray monsters and the production of monstrosity. I am not interested predominantly in the 'creature' as the model of the monster, but am concerned with two main issues: the way various contemporary texts foreground monstrosity as a 'product' of, for instance, culture, ideology and history; and the different forms of 'embodiment' that monstrosity can take. Employing the psychoanalytical insights of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, especially those theories concerning the Symbolic order, fantasy, reality and the Real, language, and what is conceptually known as 'the Void', I analyse the representational dynamics of monstrosity in nine texts: Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (1985), J. G. Ballard's High-Rise (1975), Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991), Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie (1996), Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory (1984), Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child (1988), Patrick McGrath's 'Angel' (1991), Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984) and Janice Galloway's 'Blood' (1991).
| Original language | English |
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| Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
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| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 2002 |
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