At the Direction of Beasts – the Contagious Hybridity of John Crowley’s Beasts
At the Direction of Beasts – the Contagious Hybridity of John Crowley’s Beasts

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses John Crowley’s second novel, Beasts (1976) from two complementary perspectives. The text opens with an intertextual reading that follows Michael Andre-Driussi’s intertextual interpretation in situating the novel within the tradition of the mediaeval genre known as the beast epic. The following sections of the article use the framework of monstrosity studies to consider its hybrid characters in their ambiguity, equally fascinating and repulsive, which is shown to undermine all certainties within the novel’s diegesis.

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