Leviatã e as propriedades inerentes aos monstros de horror

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the biblical monster Leviathan in selected Psalms and in the book of Job. The study of the properties and characteristics of horror fiction monsters applied to Leviathan spreads connections between aspects of the construction of the image of the monster and the interpretation that cultural studies usually make of this type of creature (as a symbol of otherness). Initially, a reflection was made on the Hebrew Bible, its style of text, symbols and the historical context of Israelite antiquity, based on the authors Robert Alter, Frank Kermode and Mosha Greenberg. Theories that expand our knowledge of the culture's monsters and its fantastic biology were also discussed. They highlight the set of categorical impurities that intensify the danger represented by the monster. In different ways, this context exemplifies aspects of the numinous, as well as the relationship between this feeling and the sacrificial configurations of abjection in ancient thought. The aim is to highlight a network of projections between the concepts of Self and Other that participates in the creation of a sense of community forged in the taboo of dangerous social differences. All of this is fed by images of the monster and its mechanisms for intensifying danger. In order to investigate this range of possibilities, we used theoretical references such as Timothy Beal, Luiz Nazário, Noel Carrol, Julia Kristeva, Mary Douglas, Rudolf Otto and Richard Kearney. Analyzing the construction of Leviathan as a monster of horror helps us to understand the taboos of eliminating what is considered monstrous in order to maintain the social and spiritual order of the sacred community that was emerging. It is understood that investigating the body and the symbol of biblical monsters through the prism of literary analysis, cultural studies, and the various areas of human knowledge in comparison, is a way of explaining how the figure of the monster in cultures delimit or establish the crisis in the processes of subjectivation of collective matrix that involve the amplification of social difference projected onto scapegoats.