Cross-posted from the books forum: Since this is the ed. forum, any ideas on specific strategies or more pedagogical issues would be appreciated! I'm in the midst of creating a thematic unit on monsters.... I want to include some cool, mostly British, stuff for a high school Brit. Lit. unit. I want to include some excerpts from Dracula, Frankenstein... and we'll read Beowulf and Macbeth... I'm looking into putting together some zombie stuff... and maybe some readings from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I'm looking for some other examples of any type of monster in brit. lit. I don't really have any poetry. I'd love to get some more ideas. Oh... I've also included some Alan Moore graphic novel excerpts... or, really, plan to. I have some ideas for some videos I can show.... maybe the fabulous Dr. Who episode called "Blink" and maybe even (not British, though Giles is in it) an episode of Buffy called "Hush." Anyway, I'm going to cross-post this (sorry) in the education forum... but does anyone know any monster poetry? More serious stuff. You can take the term "monster" literally (horrible creatures, etc.) or more metaphorically... a person who terrorizes another. Does anyone have any more ideas? Oh... and if you have any ideas on which excerpts I should use of any of the aforementioned pieces... that'd be great too! Thanks!
There's a fair bit of Poe's work out there (prose and poetry) which would fit into the sort of horror/monster theme you're looking for. You could have a look at the war poets (Sassoon, Owen) - a few of their poems are good examples of personifying war as a 'monster'. Sorry I can't give you any specific poems off the top of my head though, it's been years since I studied poetry. A Brit Lit class on monsters and zombies seems like a perfect excuse to show Shaun of the Dead though.
I did consider Poe, but he's American. I can supplement with him, so thanks. Was considering Shaun of the Dead, but I actually haven't seen it. How likely am I to get complaints from parents? Lots of cursing? Horrible violence?
You could use excerpts from Jane Eyre, where Rochester's crazy wife serves as a kind of "monstrous other" and then show the 1943 film (or clips from it) I Walked With a Zombie which is essentially a retelling of the Bronte novel but (a la Wide Saragasso Sea) set in the Caribbean with voodoo and zombies.
On the heels of that, bear in mind that the word "zombi" is an African word and reflects a cosmovision of the Niger-Delta. Perhaps an historical reading on voodoo/santeria and how the theme of (an Africanized) undead gets assimilated by non-blacks in England. It would be cool to compare the undead pre-19th century vs. post-Black immigration to England. I know that a lot of Af-Am literature seeks to reclaim that cosmovision and rearticulate it in a modern sense (think of Beloved by Morrison or the play Joe Turner's Come and Gone by Auguste Wilson). I'd be curious to see if something similar happens w/ modern Black writers in England. I have zero idea how any of this would pan out... Just throwing it out there.