"This companion explores the myths and legends of merfolk and sea monsters to navigate our transcultural pasts and environmental presents and explain our endless fascination with the sea. More than any other time in human history, our relationship to theoceans and the creatures of the Deep has come into focus, not just as an environment to be explored, exploited and, more recently, poisoned, but as source of both our deepest anxieties and possible futures. In 31 original essays by experts in their respective fields, the Deep is brought to life, from representations of mythological sea creatures to present-day visions of the blue environment. As our place in the world and our effects upon it become increasingly contentious, The Deep offers ways in which we might re-experience and realign ourselves to the watery world that covers the majority of the earth's surface and become part of a shared, more ecological, future"--
This companion explores myths and legends of merfolk and sea monsters to navigate our transcultural pasts and environmental presents and explain our endless fascination with the sea. From mythological sea creatures to present-day visions of the blue environment, The Deep offers us anchors for becoming part of a shared, more ecological future.
Whats in the Deep?
This companion explores the myths and legends of merfolk and sea monsters to navigate our transcultural pasts and environmental presents and explain our endless fascination with the sea. More than any other time in human history, our relationship to the oceans and the creatures of the Deep has come into focus, not just as an environment to be explored, exploited and, more recently, poisoned, but as a source of both our deepest anxieties and possible futures. In 31 original essays by experts in their respective fields, the Deep is brought to life, from representations of mythological sea creatures to present-day visions of the blue environment. As our place in the world and our effects upon it become increasingly contentious, The Deep offers ways in which we might re-experience and realign ourselves to the watery world that covers the majority of the earths surface and become part of a shared, more ecological, future.
Contents: Introduction Image Intervention I: Myths of the Sea and the
Sky Leviathan, Mythical Creature (600 BC present) Biblical Myth The
Matsya Avatar (300 AD present) Indian Myth Scales (Shahad Ameen, 2019)
Middle Eastern Myth The Great Horned Serpent (c. 1450 present) Iroquois
Myth Rusalki (Witold Pruszkowski, 1877) Slavic Myth Tropic of the Sea
(Satoshi Kon, 2013) Modern Japanese Myth Duyung (Abdul Razak Mohaideen,
2008) Aquatic Femininity The Legend of Kópakonan (1891) Punishing the
Monstrous Feminine The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Andersen, 1837)
Feminine Magics #Posidaeja (Efa, 2021) Reclaiming the Feminine
Underwater (William Eubank, 2020) Feminine Self in the Male Psyche
Aquaman Volume 1: The Trench (Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado, 2011
2012) Changing Masculinities The Creature from the Black Lagoon ( Jack
Arnold, 1954) Contested Masculinities The Shadow Over Innsmouth (H. P.
Lovecraft, 1936) Recontextualising the Past Hans Christian Andersen
(1805 1875) Queer Affect Image Intervention II: Untitled Into the
Drowning Deep (Mira Grant, 2017) Mimicking Femininity The Little Mermaid
(Hans Christian Andersen, 1837) Agency and the Feminine Body "The
Mermaid" (Hanna Cormick, 2018) Environmental Disability and Aquatic Climate
Crises Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore, 2014) Disentangling Difference
Possession (1981) to My Octopus Teacher (2020) Beyond Human Desire The
Daedalus and the Great Sea Serpent (1848) Oceanic Epistemologies The Lure
[ Córki dancingu] (Agnieszka Smoczyska, 2015) The Eco- other as Spectacle
The Meg ( Jon Turtletaub, 2018) Environmental Exploitation Into the
Drowning Deep (Mira Grant, 2017) Neo- colonialism and the Liminal Crawl
(Alexandre Aja, 2019) Ecological Decolonisation Spirited Away (Hayao
Miyazaki, 2001) Ecological Exchanges Image Intervention III: Becoming
Merfolk Abe Sapien (1994 present) Ecofascism and the New World Moana
(Ron Clements and John Musker, 2016) The Healing Ocean Ocean Poems (David
Malouf, 1976 1991) Becoming Ocean, Becoming Self Évolution (Lucile
Hadihalilovi, 2015) Transgressive Reproduction Subnautica (Unknown
Worlds Entertainment, 2014) Envirofuturism.
Marko Teodorski is Research Associate at the Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade. He graduated in classical archaeology from the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and obtained a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Perpignan (France) and University of Tübingen (Germany). His research primarily focuses on psychoanalysis and literature/literary theory, but spreads over a range of topics: monster theories and studies; ancient Greek culture and philosophy, as well as their modern reception; Victorian literature and culture; and ancient Hindu yogic philosophy and practice. He is the author of Nineteenth-Century Mirrors: Textuality and Transcendence (2021) and the editor of Monstrosity from the Inside Out (2014).
Simon Bacon is an award-winning author who has written or edited 20+ books on vampires, monsters and horror, including Eco-Vampires (2019), The Anthropocene and the Undead (2022), The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion (2022) and The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (forthcoming). He is the Series Editor for Genre Fiction and Film Companions and Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead with Peter Lang.
