I think I would say that my favorite project to have done this semester was my first, a traditional essay called “Monstrosity in Literature and Film“. This project was my favorite because it was interesting to explore the different interpretations of monstrosity, both in the texts we had read for class and some examples from modern literature and film. I focused on the way that monstrosity is portrayed and thought of and the reasons behind those portrayals and thoughts. I looked at this idea through Errour, the half-snake-half-woman creature that the Redcross Knight fought in The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser, the story of Medusa from Greek mythology, the giant from the movie The BFG, the giant from the film The Green Knight that we watched in class, the dragon from Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf, and the dragons from the movie How to Train Your Dragon. I used these different sources to explore the ways that monstrosity had been portrayed over time and compared them to support my thesis, “Monstrosity is defined by what we imagine to be monstrous, and, in most cases, difference.”
