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Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ed. The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. Burlington, VT. Ashgate, 2014. 625pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-1-4094-2563-5. $175.
"In my business you meet so many interesting people.. .but the most interesting ones are the monsters." Bugs Bunny. "Water, Water Every Hare"
Any text that opens with a quote from Bugs Bunny is worth looking at. In his introduction to The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, editor Jeffrey Weinstock quotes Bugs, who encountered more than his share of monsters in his long film career, to illustrate the broad appeal of monsters and suggest that the most significant element of horror narratives, where the monsters live, may be the monsters themselves. Weinstock then briefly situates the monster in history, culture and critical theory, observing, for example, that the word "monster" is related to the Latin "monstrare" (to show or reveal) and "monere" (to warn or portend) (1). A monster, as an extraordinary character in our ordinary world, is an omen that engenders both attraction and repulsion. Referencing such theorists as Rudolf Otto, Sigmund Freud, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Noel Carrol, and Julia Kriseva, Weinstock suggests that monsters are metaphors for our own anxieties that provide readers and viewers with an encounter with dread, mystery and awe. Monsters also serve as symbols for our cultural fears, and allow us to vicariously violate cultural taboos. A valid question to ask is do we need another reference work on monsters? In recent years dictionaries of film monsters, vampires, zombies, werewolves, and aliens, to name but a few, have appeared, but The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters is intended for students and scholars, not fans, although serious fans would find this encyclopedia illuminating. Weinstock notes that "this encyclopedia is in and of itself a kind of Frankenstein's monster, an assemblage of pieces and parts cobbled together and sent out in the world. Intended neither as an exhaustive bestiary (n)or a compendium of all the monsters in human history world-wide, the encyclopedia sought to attend to the...