The Deep: A Companion

What’s in the Deep?

This companion explores the myths and legends of merfolk and sea monsters to navigate our transcultural pasts and environmental presents and explain our endless fascination with the sea. More than any other time in human history, our relationship to the oceans and the creatures of the Deep has come into focus, not just as an environment to be explored, exploited and, more recently, poisoned, but as source of both our deepest anxieties and possible futures. In 31 original essays by experts in their respective fields, the Deep is brought to life, from representations of mythological sea creatures to present-day visions of the blue environment. As our place in the world and our effects upon it become increasingly contentious, The Deep offers ways in which we might re-experience and realign ourselves to the watery world that covers the majority of the earth’s surface and become part of a shared, more ecological, future.

Marko Teodorski is Research Associate at the Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade. He graduated in classical archaeology from the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and obtained a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Perpignan (France) and University of Tübingen (Germany). His research primarily focuses on psychoanalysis and literature/literary theory, but spreads over a range of topics: monster theories and studies; ancient Greek culture and philosophy, as well as their modern reception; Victorian literature and culture; and ancient Hindu yogic philosophy and practice. He is the author of Nineteenth-Century Mirrors: Textuality and Transcendence (2021) and the editor of Monstrosity from the Inside Out (2014).

Simon Bacon is an award-winning author who has written or edited 20+ books on vampires, monsters and horror, including Eco-Vampires (2019), The Anthropocene and the Undead (2022), The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion (2022) and The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (forthcoming). He is the Series Editor for Genre Fiction and Film Companions with Peter Lang.