Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States by Michael E. Heyes

Abstract

Reviewed by: Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States by Michael E. Heyes Justin Mullis Michael E. Heyes, Justin Mullis, United States, Europe, Monster Studies, Medieval, race, religious studies, Middle Ages, gothic michael e. heyes, ed. Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States. Lanham, Md. and London: Lexington Books, 2018. Pp. xxii + 268. In his introduction to Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States, editor Michael E. Heyes states three objectives he aims to achieve with this new collection of academic essays. The first is to continue expanding the field of monster studies by moving it beyond the Middle Ages; the historical period it is most commonly associated with. The second is to move the field of monster studies beyond the discourse of the dominant social class, giving greater consideration to the voices of minorities. The third and final is to incorporate the subject of religion into the field of monster studies—a component which Heyes speculates is lacking due to the fraught relationship between religion and modernity. One way of evaluating an anthology like Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques is to ask how well it accomplishes these stated goals. Despite the expressed desire to move monster studies out of the dark ages, exactly half of the ten essays presented in this collection concern the medieval period. However, it is also these chapters which do the best job of meeting the second and third of Heyes's stated goals. Minji Lee's "The Woman's Body, In-Between" looks at the monstrosity of childbirth in medieval medical texts and considers how female writers at the time responded to such conceptions, often using the holy figure of the Virgin Mary as a counterpoint. Thomas S. Franke's "Miracles and Monsters" examines the fourteenth-century Catalan Atlas, a map detailing the Christian apocalypse. Because the maker of the Catalan Atlas, Abraham Cresques, was Jewish, Franke considers how this particular atlas uses various coded symbols to critique the rampant anti-Semitism of Christian eschatology. In a similar vein, John Block Friedman's "Dressing Monstrous Men" reflects on a set of Danish church wall paintings, which depict traditional monstrous races—Cynocephalus, Monoculus, Scipodes, etc.—wearing the clothes of the oppressive landsknechte, as a not at all subtle critique of these mercenary foot soldiers. More conventional is Susanne Margarit McColeman's architectural [End Page 480] examination of the role played by humorous grotesques in otherwise solemn church spaces. Finally, Cathleen McKague's "Twelfth Night's 'poor monster'" looks at the hermaphroditic character of Viola/Cesario as an unexpected messianic figure. Though limited in historical scope the majority of this first set of essays does a commendable job of finding ways to bring both minority voices and religion into the discussion of monster studies. Conversely, the second set of essays concerning "Monstrous Modernity" drift further afield. William Shakespeare proves to be a figure that straddles the boundary between the Middle Ages and the modern world, as John W. Ellis-Etchison's essay opens this section with a consideration of how the Bard and other writers depicted corrupt political power as monstrous. Etchison's subject's relevance to the stated goals of this collection is tenuous—he briefly touches on the idea of corrupt rulers as religious portents—but it is not as out of place as Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock's "Lovecraft's Things," which examines how the influential early-twentieth-century American writer reinterpreted the classic tropes of Gothic literature for his sci-fi horror tales. While this is a good piece of literary criticism, what exactly it is doing in a collection aimed at addressing Lovecraft was both a racist and an atheist is a mystery. Also featured are two essays dealing with contemporary horror television series. Linda C. Ceriello looks at the identity-politics of the overanalyzed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while editor Heyes's own work examines the Buffy-like Sleepy Hollow. Heyes's exploration of the themes of American civil religion in Sleepy Hollow—a show that conflates the American Revolution with the biblical Book of Revelation—at least meets one of the anthology's...