Beasts of the Forest

Beasts of the Forest: Denizens of the Dark Woods offers its readers an in-depth and interdisciplinary engagement with the forest and its monstrous inhabitants; through critical readings of folklore, fiction, film, music video and animation.
Within the text there are a multitude of convergent critical perspectives used to engage and explore fictional and real monsters of the forest in media and folklore. The collection features chapters from a variety of academic perspectives: film and media studies, cultural studies, queer theory, Tolkien studies, mythology and popular music are featured. Under examination are a wide range of narratives and media forms that represent, reimagine and create the werewolves, witches and weird apparitions that inhabit the forest, along with the forest as a monstrous entity in itself.
Whether they be our shelter and safe-haven or the domain of malevolent spirits and sprites, forests have the capacity to horrify and threaten those that venture into them without permission. Human interference has continually threatened forests across the world, yet this threat is reversed in myth, folklore and more recent cultural forms. This collection ranges widely to analyse how forests figure in contemporary culture, as well as the wider contexts in which such representations are inserted.

Dr Jon Hackett is the programme director of film and communications at St Mary's University, Twickenham. His research interests include film and cultural theory, film history and popular music. He is currently working on a monograph with Dr Mark Duffett of Chester University on popular music and monstrosity, to be entitled, inevitably, Scary Monsters.
Dr Seán J. Harrington is an associate lecturer in film studies at University College Dublin. His research interests include Lacanian psychoanalysis, animation and popular culture. He has previously published work on animation and psychoanalytic theory and is the author of The Disney Fetish.