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monstro, limite e a fabricação da alteridade em Where the Wild Things Are

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to discuss the monsters and the monstrosity in the work of Maurice Sendak, notably the book Where the Wild Things Are (1963). We are interested in discussing the implications between monsters and culture in literary illustration, as a dynamic of access to the other. From the sensitive experience of otherness, the work approaches the monstrosity as an element of signic and cultural intersection. The monster, as an element of disorder, appears in the work as a rupture of boundaries linked to identity binarisms. We perceive this in the contact between hero and monster that occurs in the book: the hero Max moves to a border area where he disputes issues related to otherness, the cultural delimitations of himself and of the others, experienced in the hybridity of bodies. The article discusses the concept of the boundary of Semiotics of Culture and the ontological discussion about the limit, by the philosopher Eugenio Trías. Inserted in contemporary visual culture, literary illustration is analyzed from its materiality, as an image device with its own aesthetic qualities.