Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

Western imagination endows Grendel not only with a heightenedlevel of legitimacy as a monster, but an evidently timeless appeal.The Black Sheep: Cain and his Monstrous ProgenyBefore exploring the ways in which the monstrous Cain archetypecontinues to survive in the twenty-first century imagination, it isimportant to examine the medieval tradition of Cain monster mythsout of which characters such as Grendel arise. One such medievalaccount of the monstrous line of Cain can be found in the medievalIrish text, Sex Aetates Mundi. In it, Cain’s descendents are shownto be cursed, and are credited with having produced of all of themonstrous creatures that have ever been thought to exist:God commanded the descendents of Seth not to minglewith the descendents of Cain and not to make children withthem, nor to take wives among them. But the descendentsof Seth violated that advice and took the maidens of thedescent of Cain, for their beauty was great, and they madechildren with them in defiance of God, so that thence theresprang the monsters of the world, giants and leprechaunsand every monstrous and misbegotten shape folk have had.(Orchard 70)Another thirteenth century Rabbinical text entitled the Zohar,accounts for Cain’s cursed and murderous nature and subsequentmonstrous line of kin by claiming that he had been tainted evenprior to his conception, when his mother Eve was made impure bythe serpent in the Garden of Eden:When the serpent injected his impurity into Eve, sheabsorbed it, and so when Adam had intercourse with her8 afternoons of alterity