The creation of the monstrous other through metamorphosis

Abstract

Every age and culture has created its own Others, some in the form of monsters who mirror not only our archetypal fears but our contemporary anxieties. Metamorphosis always involves otherizing and certain monsters are engendered through metamorphosis. It is these that I have chosen to work on in the light of mythography and contemporary literary theory. In this dissertation I analyze four narratives which focus on monstrous “others” and explore the relationship between these “others” and the societies that breed them. Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometeus and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are read as the rewriting of mythic stories in which metamorphosis is brought about by the father. Stoker’s Dracula and Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray on the other hand are two monstrous Others with protean genders echoing ancient myths of metamorphosing vampires and evil personified.|Keywords : metamorphosis, the Other, mythology, scapegoats, fathers and sons, evil, beauty.