Reinterpreting Leviathan today: Monstrosity, ecocriticism and socio-political anxieties in two sea narratives

This article analyses two recent American rewritings of the Leviathan myth: Dan Simmons's 'The Terror' (2007) and Tim Curran's 'Leviathan' (2013). Belonging to a tradition that has fruitfully elaborated the sea monster paradigm, both novels respond to current concerns about the spiritual and ethical decline of Western culture, the perils of anarchy, the monetarization of relations, and the impending ecological disasters. Besides exploring the biblical and Hobbesian intertextuality of the two novels, the article investigates various meanings coalescing into the scary creatures represented by Simmons and Curran. Two other objects of scrutiny are the increasing spectacularization of horror in today's literature and the potentiality of nautical Gothic, a form of writing that connotes the sea as a perturbing generator of psychoontological distress.