Medieval monster imagery persists in modern political discourse about Muslims.

Evidence

By looking at how monsters function in culture as a tableau onto which numerous fears and anxieties are placed, we can better understand their role in identity-formation. The period examined, roughly thirteen hundred years, suggests that monsters are not limited to pre-modernity, and that no one-to-one linkage exists between medieval creatures and those situated later, in the European Enlightenment, during the Orientalist heyday, or in the colonial American period. While the linkage may not be direct, many of the monsters covered in this study share similar characteristics to those that were first formulated in medieval times. These monsters disturb the calm of white Christianity, providing a standard contrary to normative humanity. In political discourse, Muslims continue to be framed as disturbances, assaulting Western civilization’s ordered sensibilities. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 28

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core thesis that the image preceded contact — the medieval formulation survives into modern political discourse unchanged in structure.
• QUESTION: If the linkage is not one-to-one, what precisely changed between medieval and modern deployments of the monster? Worth chasing for the reader’s genealogy.