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Session 3: Monsters From the Depths
Chair: Maja Brzozowska

Monstrous Nature: Moby Dick as Monster Between Myth and Modernity
Roberta Fornari
Faculty of Communication Studies at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome, Italy

All over time and history, literature is a privileged field for representing the monstrous in all its variants: from deformity to mutation, from metamorphosis to misshape, etc. In this sense, a crucial role is represented by animals and wonderful beasts both as ambivalent symbols of enduring force and wickedness as well.
The entire history of epic literature could be defined as a “monster show”, from Homer’s Odissey to Lucian’s True History, from the bestiaries of the Middle ages to the representation and investigations of modern era which address the animal-monster as haunting presence into society and human nature as well (Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels for example) monstrous animals enter the realm of novels as ambiguous symbols of evil and wickedness which need to be suppressed and/or destroyed (last of all the werewolf as popular monster between legend and psychopathology).
In this wide context it could be affirmed that “national” literatures and modern cultures have elaborated and reaffirmed the presence of monsters as expression of the fears and anxiety of modern society in the age of economic and industrial development. In Minima Moralia, Adorno affirms that modern culture needs to create wonderful and overwhelming beasts as signs of the greatness of Nature challenging human developments (for example King Kong), only because Nature itself has already been overwhelmed by technology.
In this perspective, I would like to address a literary masterwork that is particularly relevant to this discourse. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville creates a modern American epic that is a crucial, turning point between myth and modernity and he creates a monster that is both ambivalent and impossible to define entirely and definitively. As the representation of an evil presence, the proof of wickedness and “deadliest ill” typical of monsters in literature, Moby Dick is also the overwhelming, enduring presence of Nature in a world that is on the brink of a great change. The violence and revengeful response that the animal-monster draws on itself achieves a much deeper meaning that that required by the simple hunting process and becomes the expression of what is most dangerous and wicked in human nature, that is the destruction of Nature itself in the age of technological development and economic enterprise.

Feeding Frenzy? Media Sharks Monster Jaws
Wendy Bilboe
University of Canberra , Australia

It’s estimated that about 2,000 people die in the world each year from lightning strikes. At the same time, their own pet dogs kill about 20 Australians each year while shark deaths in Australia account for two or three deaths every few years. Despite this, Australians have a morbid fear of sharks. In a country which has adopted European mythic monsters into everyday life and literature and whose indigenous monsters such as the Yowie and Bunyip are viewed as benign and friendly (by non indigenous people), the shark has unrealistically been awarded the mantle of mythic and real monster by journalists. This paper analyses the gradual rise of public fear of sharks, the journalistic “feeding frenzy” over three recent shark attack deaths and postulates that sharks remain for most Australians the last remaining “fear” of conquering our harsh environment –despite the fact that many sharks are on the endangered lists.

Rational, Magical, or Monstrous Spaces: Press Responses to London ’s Sewer System, 1865-68
Paul Dobraszczyk
Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom,

Writing in London in July 1861 – during the peak of activity in the building of the city’s main drainage system – the journalist John Hollingshead (1827-1904), in All The Year Round, stated that ‘there are more ways than one of looking at sewers’. This small but significant observation forms the key to this paper, which considers press responses to the main drainage system, focusing on accounts describing the public ceremonies held at the Crossness (1862-65) and Abbey Mills (1865-68) pumping stations, which marked the opening of the system south and north of the river Thames respectively. Historians of the main drainage system have conventionally regarded these responses as uniformly homogenous and celebratory. By focusing on a wide variety of press accounts documenting the same events, this paper will question such a sense of apparent uniformity. Rather, it will be shown that these accounts embody a complex variety of responses, characterised by the interplay of the rational, the magical and the monstrous.
The structure of the paper will be as follows: firstly, I will briefly outline the function of the pumping stations and their role as important sites for public awareness of the main drainage system; secondly, I will examine the press accounts themselves, drawing out their commonalities and differences and discussing in turn aspects of the rational, magical and monstrous; finally, I will assess how the sense of the monstrous relates to the wider context of mid-Victorian ideas about sewers and interpretations of these ideas by contemporary scholars.

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