Lo monstruoso en cuatro novelas del siglo XIX
Monstrosity in Four Nineteenth ­Century Novels

Summary/Abstract: In this article we will analyze the conception of the monstrous in four nineteenth-century literary texts belonging to English literature, highlighting the common and different aspects on the vision of the monster, based on the idiosyncrasies of the period in which they were published, and on the narrators’ particular context. The works under study are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818), R.L. Stevenson’s, The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). We will begin with an approach to the conception of the monstrous in the four novels, and then focus on the chronotope, the attributes of the monster and the mythical and symbolic elements of the novels. Our intention is to highlight the similarities and differences between them and the evolution of the monster from the scientific theories that inspired the gothic novel Frankenstein, through the duality of the human being in Jekyll and Hyde and Dorian Gray, to end with the creation of another of the essential myths of modern literature and culture, the vampire.

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