The invisible monster: the shaking of the borders between monstrosity and humanity

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how the modern monster presents itself
in literature. In the displacement of physical monster for moral monster,
identified by Foucault, hybridity that composes such creatures can no longer
be visually identified in physical appearance. In the same motion, we intend
to show how other attributes that make up the configuration of monstrosity
also change, presenting in our analysis with examples of literary texts of
English literature of the nineteenth century and Brazilian literary narratives
by Machado de Assis, Rubem Fonseca and Lourenço Mutarelli. Our goal is to
point out how the update of the characteristics of monsters approaches such
figures to human, in a shift that blurs the boundaries between us and them,
identity and otherness, humanity and monstrosity.