AD34 - Annotated Bibliography

WARNER, M. (1994) Six myths of our time – managing monsters- The Reith Lectures 1994. London: Vintage.

This book contains information about metaphorical and literal monsters and how we as humans accommodate them and adapt to fight against them.  One of the earlier chapters named “Boys Will Be Boys: The Making of the Male” writes about the implication of monsters within video games along with a general concept and origin of the word and how it was derived from the Latin word Monestrum. Later chapters talk about children’s ignorance protecting their innocence and how they are the embodiment of humanity, they are alien and not yet a part of our society. There is also something about the child needing to empower himself and essentially become the monster in order to defeat his demons.  Finally it touches on famous stories that involve man becoming a beast and how that is then used as a metaphor for innocence.

Melrose, A., (2012) Monsters Under the Bed. Abingdon: Routledge 

A pychological study of monsters and children's picture books. One chapter was about the cult classic Where the Wild Things Are and it talked about the text supporting the 'known' but the beastly images however support the 'unknown'. A very useful study. 

ASMA, S.T. (2009) On Monsters – An unnatural history of our worst fears. Madison Avenue, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Marvellous compendium of the many different forms that monsters take and how we go about dealing with them. The book talks about monstrous desire, monstrous forms as well as the many methods of explaining monsters such as biblical and mythical. “Responding to the Marvellous” was a very interesting section that went through the three different stages of accepting monsters, this was first acknowledged as evidence from people who have been told stories or had paid to see a play. This information was first founded by historian Madeleine Doran around Shakespearean times.  The first was to innocently believe in what was being seen, the concept of witches and demons was not uncommon back in these times and therefore providing a fair agreement for people to believe in such. The second method demonstrated a sceptical approach where the viewer is willing to entertain the idea without actually believing in said story, but said person is still afraid of the concept and may be found praying for his life or touching wood for good luck. Finally the third approach was to not believe in the concept at all but instead choose to entertain the idea to gain some ‘symbolic or imaginative satisfaction’.    

DENICKE, l & THALER, P. (2013) Picto-Prophets. VAROOM. P.11b, P.12a, p.17a.

(May have to check how I’ve referenced that)

This article is about the digital shift in art and how we have grown to accept the future. There are parts in the article which talk about artists using a mixture of different media both traditional and digital and how the difference in media can change the characters outcome. There was a lot of talk about the white space used by some artists and how it is the ‘white noise’ in which characters exist. The article’s main theme was character design and digital arts but the talk of characterization and applying context to said character seemed interesting to my study.  There was also brief talk about web icons being created to welcome users to the digital world and help rid them of their digital angst. It spoke of smiling web icons being the metaphorical gatekeepers and I found that to be very interesting, it seems that characters, even in the digital world have a purpose.  

 COHEN, J,J. (1996) Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Collection of essays compiled together in an attempt to explain monsters within our culture and why they exist.  Some interesting sections included ‘The monster dwells at the gates of difference’ and it writes about how we push monsters away into a rhetorical world but they truly reside within.  Another section was about fear of a monster actually being a desire for the unknown, it also talks about how we consciously make monsters forbidden which in turn makes them more appealing. Amongst other theories and explanations I can see that monster are far greater that little effigies that live under the bed.

BUCHER, G, S. (2008) 100 Days of Monsters. Cincinnati, Ohio: How books.

Fun little book that documents 100 days of Bucher’s life, more specifically the images he created. Each day he would video himself splashing ink onto a page and he would then turn the image into a little creature. He then posted them online and collected stories that random people had submitted about each monster.  The DVD that originally came with the book was not there when I took it out of the library but it essentially brought the process to life, his work supports that monsters are a strong figment of our imagination and they spawn from literally anything. Some of the stories that people had submitted were absolutely ridiculous but that interested me because as far as monsters go I love their impossibility, their absurdity and their general effect they have on our lives.   

SHARPE, A,N. (2010) Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Bit of a long shot but the book has some useful points about monstrous figures and habits. The book writes about some of Foucault’s theories on monsters and challenges them with current theories; there was a lot about monsters committing a ‘double breach’ over law and nature. The final chapter writes about humans ultimately fearing the loss of their own identity to animals and it writes about the link between man and primate and that we do not biologically have any particular feature that differentiates us as a race. This was just interesting to support my idea that monsters are a lot closer to us than we think. Of course the word monster has warped over time and can mean a variety of things and yes of course humans can be depicted as monsters, though fictional monsters are created by humans and therefore are often given human qualities and emotions.  You could even go as far as suggest that the monsters we make are the warped versions of ourselves, hell bent on stealing our personality, our individuality and ultimately wish to become the new us.

Poblocki, D. (2010), The Stone Child, Kindle version, Accessed January 2010 from Amazon.co.uk

A book I came across whilst I was online and it has some interesting things about monsters so I bought it seeing as it was fairly cheap for the Kindle. My opening essay quote “… we have bad dreams because our brain is trying to protect us… If we can figure out a way to beat the imaginary monsters … Then the real monsters don’t sound so scary… That’s why we like reading scary stories.” Was found in the early chapters of this book, I thought it was a good quote as it related to my findings near the end of the essay. 

McCoy, D. (2012) Fenrir. [online]. Nashville: Dan McCoy. Available from: http://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/fenrir/  [Accessed on 16^th August 2014, at 9.32].

A useful website based around Norse Mythology and it provided me with a lot of good definitions and examples that I could use in my essay. Fenrir – the giant black wolf was one of the more useful categories as it considered real animal characteristics and mentions monstrous scale, both topics of interest. 

Cherry, K. (2014) The Conscious and unconscious mind. [online]. Unknown. Available from: http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/consciousuncon.htm [Accessed on 12th September 2014, at 10.15].

Thinking slightly more psychologically with this website, Kendra refers back to Sigmund Freud as his theory of the mind where he exclaims that there are three stage, the conscious, pre conscious and  unconscious. I wanted to understand how the mind works in order to understand where the monster concept may reside.  An understanding of the brain would help understand how we as humans make our own monsters.

Nastasi, A.(2013) The Greatest Monsters in Children’s Literature. [online]. Unknown: Flavorwire. Available from: http://flavorwire.com/426522/the-greatest-monsters-in-childrens-literature/1 [Accessed on 22nd August 2014, at 9.45]

Perhaps one of the more useful websites I came across. I has a list of the top 10 greatest monsters in children’s literature, featuring monsters like the Jabberwock and the Grinch. Without this site I would not have known about Harry and the Terrible Whatzit which is a great story that ended up making the cut in my final timeline.

Jones, G. (2002) Killing Monsters – Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make –Believe Violence New York: Basic Books.

Another valuable source, I found this book online and it just had a lot of great information concerning a child and their own monsters. It talked about children relating themselves to famous heroes from books and the idea that they aspire to become them. It also talked about violence and how that distorts a child’s reality.

Pullman,G,L. (2007) Chillers and Thrillers. [online]. 13^th January 2012. Available from: http://writinghorrorfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/metaphorical-monsters.html  [ Accessed on August 2014, at 3.00]

This was a blog post about accepting the concept of monsters and the meaning behind common metaphorical ones. It provided a graph that would show the different meanings a literal word can take on.
For example the word fog, symbolically it could represent blindness, existentially it could represent the fear of the unknown and spiritually it could represent death and or annihilation.  

Gray, P. [2011] Why Young Children Protest Bedtime: Evolutionary Mismatch .[online]. 11^th October 2011. Available from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201110/why-young-children-protest-bedtime-evolutionary-mismatch [Accessed on January 2015, at 12.45]

A blog post about children refusing to go to sleep because of their fear of being left alone with the monsters they create. It talks about human evolution and why children in in certain parts of the world protest bedtime because they are nurtured too much and that leads them to take advantage of their ‘soft’ parents. It is quite the analysis but maybe it will be useful.

Conley, M. [2012] Where the Wild Things Are: The Psychology Behind Maurice Sendak’s Classic .[online]. 8^th May 2012. Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/05/08/maurice-sendak-the-pointed-psychology-behind-wild-things/  [ Accessed on January 2015, at 3.00]

An in depth research blog about the famous children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and the psychology behind it. The blog talks about protagonist Max’s need for attention and how the Wild Things are a metaphor for his need to act out.

Godbey, C. [2009] Terrible Yellow Eyes. [online]. 1^st January 2010. Available from: http://www.terribleyelloweyes.com/ [ Accessed on September 2014, at 5.10]

My lecturer had showed me this blog after I had decided that I wanted to look at children’s picture books. This is a blog that collects artist’s interpretations of Where the Wild Things Are and it was amazing to see how many people had contributed to this site. This was also what fuelled me to make representations of my own.

Fritscher, L., [2013]. What Is the Fear of Monsters?. [Online]. 3^rd September 2013. Available from: http://phobias.about.com/od/phobiaslist/f/What-Is-The-Fear-Of-Monsters.htm [Accessed January 15th 2015 at 10.25] 

Blog post about the general fear of monsters (Tetraphobia). It talks about monsters being common in younger children and it is often something that they outgrow but in rare cases it can effect older teens too. It also talks about the subject matter of a monster being under the bed, it goes on to say that generally it isn’t a specific monster that they are afraid of like Dracula or Frankenstein, but instead something that has maybe been triggered by something that they have seen or heard.  

Tarantola, A., [ 2013]. Why we’re afraid of the dark (and why it’s good that we are). [Online]. 31st October 2013. Available from: http://gizmodo.com/why-were-afraid-of-the-dark-and-why-its-good-that-we-a-1448915260

Really interesting blog post from Gizmodo where Andrew Tarantola talks about the idea that being afraid is a good thing as it keep us aware and away from potential threats. Again it talks about human evolution and how we used to live outside in complete darkness and it was out instinct that kept us alive. I used this to help structure my theory that we enjoy being afraid as this post suggested that being afraid is an emotion our body instinctively puts into action. 

Edwards, P, A,. (2008) The Amygdala: The Bodies Alarm Circuit. [Online] New York: The Dana Foundation. Available from: http://www.dana.org/Publications/Brainwork/Details.aspx?id=43615 [Accessed on 15^th January 2015, at 10.35] 

AND 

Bailey, R,. (2014) Hippocampus. [Online] Available from: http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/p/hippocampus.htm [Accessed on 15th January, at 10.45] 

Rachman, S,. (1998) A Cognitive Theory of Obsessions: Elaborations. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Book about human desire, the book traces the emotion back to its roots in an attempt to understand where it originates in the mind and how desire becomes a form of obsession. 

These pages were used to gain an understanding of the parts of the brain that are associated with fear and memories, two important factors that cause a monster to inhabit the imagination. 

Seuss,. (1957) How The Grinch Stole Christmas!. London: HarperCollinsPublishers   

Sendak, M,. (1963)  Where the Wild Things Are. London: Red Fox.

Monsters, Inc..2001. Directed by David Silverman, Lee Unkrich and Pete Doctor. USA: Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios. [Film] 

Alice in Wonderland. 1951. Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske and Wilfred Jackson. USA: Walt Disney Productions. [Film]

The Phantom Tollbooth. 1970. Directed by Abe Levitow, Chuck Jones and Dave Monahan. USA: MGM. [Film]

How the Grinch Stole Christmas. 2000. Directed by Ron Howard. USA: Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, LUNI Productions GmbH and Company KG. [Film] 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! .1966. Directed by Ben Washam, Chuck Jones. USA: The Cat in the Hat Productions, MGM Television. [Film].

Carroll, L,. (1871) Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. London: Macmillan

Gackenbach, D,. (1984) Harry and the Terrible Whatzit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Norton, J,. (1961) The Phantom Tollbooth. London: Random House. 

All of the highlighted were the books and films that I used to support my study of monsters and the construction of my timeline. The films were used to colour reference some of the characters as a few of the book's illustrations were in black and white. Some of the films such as the Phantom Tollbooth were also used to guide my choices on certain characteristics that the chosen monsters had. 

Above are all of the sources that I ended up using to either structure or be a part of my essay. The amount of websites that I actually went on was ridiculous and felt that they weren't really that useful towards the final outcome so a lot of them are not included.