This essay discusses the reimagining of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory as it applies to modern retellings of classic folklore. I argue that modern authors (such as Anne Carson and Ōba Minako) have reshaped monstrosity to not only reflect cultural anxieties and rejected persons, but to humanize them and add the narrative posibility for reclamation through monsterhood. Thank you for reading!
Sources:
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/24642/autobiography-of-red-by-anne-carson
“The Smile of the Mountain Witch” by Ōba Minako https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315703138-12/smile-mountain-witch-ohba-minako
Monster Theory: Reading Culture by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsq4d
Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch edited by Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364075118_Yamamba_In_Search_of_the_Japanese_Mountain_Witch
Library by Pseudo-Apollodorus
https://archive.org/details/apollodorus-the-library-book-1/page/n1/mode/2up
Literaphilia 
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