Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination

A culture defines monsters against what is essentially thought of as human. Creatures such as the harpy, the siren, the witch and the half-human all threaten to destroy our sense of power and intelligence and usurp our human consciousness. In this way, monster myths actually work to define a culture's definition of what is human. In Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, a broad range of scholars examine the monster in Italian culture and its evolution from the Medieval period to the 20th century.