No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock – Marina Warner – Chatto & Windus, 1998

What the Work Explores

In No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, Marina Warner, a distinguished scholar of mythology and fairy tales, conducts an erudite investigation into the cultural history of fear. The work examines the figure of the ‘Bogeyman’—the archetypal monster used to frighten children—not as a single entity, but as a shifting set of images and narratives that reflect human anxieties about appetite, darkness, and the unknown. Warner explores how these figures are constructed, disseminated, and ultimately transformed by the societies that create them.

The Three Movements of Fear

The work is organized into three thematic sections that describe the human relationship with the monstrous: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock. The author investigates how these three distinct modes of engagement allow us to process and manage terror.

Scaring: This section investigates the raw power of the monster. The author explores the iconography of the ogre and the giant, focusing on the theme of ‘devouring.’ Through an analysis of Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son and the stories of Cronus, Warner investigates the deep-seated human fear of being consumed, literally and metaphorically. The work examines how the Bogeyman serves as a boundary marker, enforcing social taboos and moral codes through the threat of violence.
Lulling: Warner explores the paradoxical nature of the lullaby. This work investigates how songs meant to soothe infants often contain dark, threatening imagery—falling cradles, wolves, or the arrival of a predator. The author examines these ‘scary songs’ as a form of inoculation, where the caregiver introduces the concept of danger in a controlled, rhythmic, and safe environment, thereby helping the child (and perhaps the parent) to cope with the inherent vulnerability of sleep and night.
Making Mock: The final section investigates the process of disarmament through humor. The author explores how monsters are ridiculed, satirized, and eventually turned into ‘cute’ or domestic figures. This work examines the transition from the terrifying demons of medieval art to the comical ogres of modern animation and film. Warner investigates the role of the carnival and the grotesque in allowing humans to laugh at what they once feared, a psychological mechanism for asserting mastery over the uncontrollable.

The Ogre’s Banquet

A significant portion of the work is dedicated to the concept of the ‘banquet.’ The author explores the historical and mythological link between monsters and gluttony. From the Cyclops in the Odyssey to the ogre in Puss in Boots, Warner investigates why the monster is so often defined by its hunger. This work examines how these stories reflect cultural anxieties about scarcity, cannibalism, and the loss of the human spirit to animalistic impulse. The author explores the symbolic weight of the ‘child-eater’ as a representation of the destructive potential of the older generation over the younger, or the state over the individual.

Metamorphosis and Modern Monsters

Warner investigates the evolution of the Bogeyman into the modern era. This work examines how traditional folkloric figures have been replaced by the ‘monsters’ of contemporary media, such as Hannibal Lecter, or the highly aestheticized vampires and aliens of cinema. The author explores how these modern iterations retain the symbolic DNA of their predecessors while adapting to new societal fears, such as technology, psychiatric deviance, or corporate overreach. The work examines the concept of ‘the monster within,’ exploring how modern narratives often blur the line between the human and the monstrous.

Art and the Iconography of Terror

The author investigates the role of visual art in shaping our perception of the Bogeyman. Drawing from art history, Warner explores the work of Goya, Fuseli, and various illustrators of fairy tales. This work examines how artists have given form to the formless, creating a shared visual vocabulary of fear. The author investigates how the ‘sublime’ and the ‘grotesque’ interact to produce a sense of awe-filled terror, and how these images function as historical records of a society’s nightmares.

Historical / Cultural Context

Marina Warner is a renowned cultural historian and novelist known for her extensive research into myths, legends, and the female experience in folklore. No Go the Bogeyman was published in 1998, serving as a companion and follow-up to her earlier work on fairy tales, From the Beast to the Blonde. The work matters historically as it marks a transition in mythological studies toward a more psychological and media-aware approach to traditional archetypes.

The context of the work is informed by the late 20th-century fascination with horror and the ‘gothic,’ as well as the rising academic interest in the history of childhood. Warner’s work arrives at a time when the boundaries between high art and popular culture were becoming increasingly porous, allowing her to analyze a Goya painting with the same scholarly rigour as a nursery rhyme or a contemporary horror film. The work matters because it highlights the continuity of human imagination, showing that while the specific masks of the Bogeyman change, the underlying psychological needs they serve remain remarkably consistent.

Who This Book Is For

This work is intended for readers who seek a deep, multidisciplinary understanding of cultural archetypes. It is particularly relevant for:

Folklorists and Mythologists: Those interested in the evolution of fairy-tale motifs and the structural role of the monster in narrative.
Art Historians and Critics: Readers seeking to understand the symbolic representation of fear and the grotesque in visual media.
Psychologists and Sociologists: Individuals investigating the mechanisms of fear, the history of childhood, and how humor is used as a coping strategy.
Cultural Historians: Anyone interested in the long history of human anxieties and the symbolic ways we have attempted to manage the ‘nightmare’ side of existence.