1st Edition
Maternity, Monstrosity, and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare
By Sara Burdorff
Copyright 2025
336 Pages
by
Routledge
336 Pages
by
Routledge
336 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This work uses an adaptation of monster theory to rethink the foundations of epic-heroic immortality. Rather than focusing on a specific monster or monsters, the author identifies the belly-monstrous as a crucial point of intersection between mothers and warriors in traditional narratives of the Trojan War. Identifying the gestating/digesting belly as the center of the Iliadic world, this... Read more
Introduction, Part I: Mother, Warrior, Monster, Chapter 1. The Monstrosity of Woman and Belly, Chapter 2. The Warrior at War, Chapter 3. Engendering the Hero: Destruction, Generation, and Kleos Aphthiton, Part II: Troy and Its Aftermath: Mothers, Warriors, and Monsters in the Ancient World, Chapter 4. For the Sake of Helen, Chapter 5. Clytemnestra and the Furies, Chapter 6. Hecuba, Queen of Troy, Part III: Elizabethan Anxieties: Mothers, Warriors, and Monsters in Shakespeare, Introduction Shakespeare and the Iliadic Belly-Monstrous, Chapter 7. Titus Andronicus: Authorizing Warrior and Monster, Chapter 8. 1-3 Henry VI and Richard III: The Mother's Creatures, Chapter 9. Coriolanus: A Return to the Source
Biography
Sara Frances Burdorff is an independent scholar and associate of the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies. She has a PhD in English from UCLA and an MPhil in Renaissance English from Cambridge University. In addition to Homer, Shakespeare, mothers, and monsters, her other research interests include Old English riddles and poetry. She has also appeared in public media as a myth and folklore expert on cryptids and other mysterious phenomena.
