What is a Monster According to Frankenstein Peter

“What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)” Peter Brooks Prepared by: Dr. Kay Picart

Aim: t To discuss Brooks’ various characterizations of monstrosity t To discuss how the monstrous body is often envisaged in film and dance

Monstrosity t “The outcome or product of curiousity or epistemophilia pushed to an extreme that results —as in the story of Oedipus—in confusion, blindness, and exile. ” (218)

Monstrosity--2 t It cannot be located in “any of the taxonomic schemes devised by the human mind to understand to order nature. ” (218)

Monstrosity--3 t It is an “excess of signification, a strange byproduct or leftover of the process of making meaning. ” (218)

Monstrosity--4 t It is an “imaginary being who comes to life in language and, once having done so, cannot be eliminated from language. ” (218)

Questions: t Are monsters specifically gendered, raced or classed in Frankenstein? t In cinematic depictions of the Frankenstein myth, are monsters raced, gendered or classed?

Evolving Replies According to Brooks t. A monster is a woman seeking to escape the feminine condition into recognition by the fraternity. (218) t A monster eludes gender definition. (219)

Question: t How is the monstrous body represented in comedic horror versions like Young Frankenstein and The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Concluding Remarks: t “In Frankenstein, language is marked by the body, by the process of embodiment. We have not so much a mark on the body as the mark of the body: the capacity of language to create a body, one that in turn calls into question the language that we use to classify and control bodies. ” (220) t Question: What implications re. bodily categorization follow from these remarks?