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What can we learn about religion when we approach it through its monsters? What do monstrous stories - whether myth, legend, or fiction - reveal about the sacred? In what ways is a monster sacred and the sacred monstrous? This class explores the monster as the apotheosis of the horror of human existence. Our emphasis will be upon Western religious traditions (Judaism and Christianity), but the course will cover a very diverse range of imaginative expressions, including ancient myths of chaos gods, Greek myth and Latin tragedy, Jewish legends, medieval Christian epic poetry, 19th c. Gothic novels, as well as paintings, sculpture, architecture, music, and modern film. Through our examination of fantastic imaginative expressions in their historical contexts, we will explore religious attempts to try to come to terms with - or even tame - the monstrous side of the sacred.
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