The monstrous female: monstrosity in the Anglo-Saxon monstrous and early modern witchcraft traditions

This thesis will analyse the medieval monster tradition along gender lines and assess how the gender-monstrosity matrix informed the early modern Scottish and English witchcraft traditions. This new analysis of witchcraft literature will involve re-conceiving it as part of a much longer continuum of monstrosity that may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon Marvels of the East. An analysis of witches in relation to monsters is justified owing to the consistent tendency in the monsters literature to define as monstrous violations of stereotyped masculine and feminine behaviours. I aim to demonstrate that witchcraft literature displays a similar ideological approach by identifying the transgression of stereotyped gender roles as a primary characteristic of witches, both male and female