Enchanted Creatures
Our Monsters and Their Meanings
Natalie Lawrence’s work of cultural inquiry, Enchanted Creatures, analyzes fabled and mythical beasts across human history, folklore, and literature, asking why monsters persist in human imaginations.
Organized into sections on monsters of creation, nature, and knowledge, the chapters present evidence from archaeology, myths, epics, science, and psychology. Each focuses on creatures and their variations: horned gods and hunters from cave paintings, cosmic dragons like Tiamat, the Minotaur, snake women like Medusa, Grendel and outsider monsters, leviathans and deep sea terrors, scaly and uncategorizable critters like the pangolin, and dinosaurs. By putting these fantastical creatures into conversation with religions and scientific discoveries, Lawrence demonstrates how every culture’s worldview has a place for monsters, and how what is deemed monstrous says more about people than about “monsters.” For example, by juxtaposing experiments on snake fixations with accounts of the snake in the garden of Eden, the snake women chapter argues that the association of snakes with danger, and often with women, has been with humans since our earliest days.
Western myths and stories are the most prominent, though cross-cultural examples abound, as with tie-ins from the Japanese franchise Godzilla, which Lawrence interprets as a reflection on not only nuclear war but also of the interdependent relationship humanity has with nature. Humans attempt to domesticate monsters by telling stories about them, but these stories are multifaceted and often reveal how people project their innermost fears onto scapegoated figures, as with the Minotaur and its contemporary descendants in bull-fighting rings.
Comprehensive yet accessible, Enchanted Creatures perches at the intersection of literary criticism and cultural studies with its exciting examinations of the beasts that accompany humanity through dreams and nightmares alike.
Reviewed by
Jeana Jorgensen
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
