Urban Monstrosities

Download or read book Urban Monstrosities written by Joseph Lamperez and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sign of sublime excess and transgression, guardian of the threshold and uncanny creature par excellence, the monster of late has also become a mainstay of urban narratives – even while its presence in these texts remains untheorized. The authors in this collection show how artists and writers across the past two hundred years, from William Wordsworth to China Miéville, figure the monster as a barometer of changing urban patterns. Here, monstrosity becomes the herald of embryonic social forms and marginalized populations in portrayals of cities across media – from video games, film and avant-garde sonic experiments to written tales of urban fantasy and gothic ruin. This volume suggests that poetic and municipal structures evolve in tandem. Within its chapters, unearthly buildings and beings signal a host of new urban dispensations.