the canon

• red dragon
• silence of the lambs
• hannibal
• hannibal rising

suggested reading - mythology

• baudelaire, les fleurs du mal
• blake, the marriage of heaven and hell
• dante, the divine comedy: inferno
• dante, la vita nuova
• dostoevsky, the brothers karamazov
• goethe, faust
• milton, paradise lost
• shelley, frankenstein
• stoker, dracula

others

• flannery o'connor, wise blood
• flannery o'connor, a good man is hard to find
• truman capote, in cold blood

quotes

"This, then, was Tantalus’ crime: he tempted the gods to transgression. That he killed his own son is horrifying, of course, but that he sought to involve the gods themselves in his crime--this is strictly unforgivable. [...] The guilt flowing from these crimes is so profound, so penetrating, that it can render even the gods impure."

• x

"Tithecott argues that the construction of the serial killer as monster is the latest sign of our current desire to seek a 'language of condemnation', which clearly separates our 'selves' from our 'others' in a lasting way. [...] Contemporary tales of murder, Halttunin posits, often promise readers and viewers a 'mental journey into darkness'. This implies that evil is not native to the reader's country, it is foreign, elsewhere, Other. [...] The real menace in Dahmer's image is its normality. It is ourselves staring back at us."

• cannibalism in literature and film, by jennifer brown

essays

• king of killers: the criminological theories of hannibal lecter, part one
• contemporary demonology: the criminological theories of hannibal lecter, part two
• the devil made me do it: the criminological theories of hannibal lecter, part three