The influence of Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) on contemporary cultural studies cannot be overestimated. While he was exploring the carnivalesque origins of the polyphonic novel, Bakhtin re-discovered the theme of the grotesque for cultural studies. Whereas in his monograph on François Rabelais (ca. 1494–1553) Bakhtin mainly focused on the carnival of the Middle Ages, he also called attention to the grotesque images in Graeco-Roman sources. In his footsteps, the subject of the grotesque has become popular in contemporary literary criticism, and has been applied to ancient literature.

One of the themes that captivated both Rabelais and Bakhtin was the paradoxical, grotesque nature of the underworld in Western literary tradition. Not only literary critics find hell a fascinating subject of study. The themes of Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic literature continue to capture the imagination of Western readers, including academics and the broad public alike. Given this interest in the grotesque as well as in the genesis of the Christian underworld, a study of the grotesque in hell is a much-needed and timely endeavor. The literary use of the grotesque in early Christianity, however, is not restricted to the underworld. In this book, I integrate the subjects of hell, scatology, and metamorphosis into a unified treatment of the grotesque body, and invite classical literature, apocalyptic sources, and narrative texts into the discussion.