ABSTRACT

The figure of the Elephant Man has, through a myriad of cultural interpretations spanning poetry, drama, cinema, and even music, survived through to the twenty-first century as perhaps the most easily recognised example of what could be termed the monstrous body. While it may be that the sensational melodrama, the fictionalised tale that supplants whatever Joseph Merrick’s own story might have been, is responsible for this persistent popularity, there is much beyond the melodrama to invoke consideration and analysis. The mosaic of medical and non-medical mediations of Merrick’s body by those who encountered him during his lifetime offer an outstanding set of evidence. In these testaments are located critical understandings of monstrous embodiment, understandings which have consistently emphasised transgression and fragmentation as its defining characteristic.