The Enlightenment's focus on rationalism and science did the opposite of what might be expected, inspiring new legions of monsters in domestic and foreign spaces, rather than eradicating them. This makes sense if we accept Charles Taylor's argument that evil became even more generalized in modernity, which was further impacted by Protestantism's suppression of iconography. All of this inspired new categories of monsters that emerged as a way for the imagination to express itself in socially acceptable ways that did not offend religious morals.

XREF: Connects to the broader paradox that secularism and enlightenment did not eliminate superstition, echoing themes about how modernity generates its own mythologies.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 352