I may be teaching this same class Spring Term, and I'm thinking about doing the whole course on monsters. We could start with Beowulf, read Gardner's Grendel, Autobiography of Red, maybe Frankenstein, Steven Sherrill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. I'd hate to repeat too much of what the students read in high school though, and I've heard a number of students say they've already read Grendel. Pretty much all of them, of course, are familiar with Beowulf. Anybody have any ideas about books that contain literal "monsters?"
2 comments:
Perhaps a stretch and not so literal, but The Elephant Man would be my suggestion.
I teach high school english to seniors and we read Beowulf and Frankenstein.
Thanks for the recommendation, Max. The Elephant Man would definitely be a good fit for something like this.
I think I'd have to avoid Frankenstein and Beowulf not just because so many students read them in high school, but because they're also going to have to read them in other classes in college if they become majors. I'd much rather teach stuff that's new and that they're not going to encounter again in school.
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