Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern Culture Mighty Magic

by Williams, Wes

• ISBN13: 9780199577026
• ISBN10: 0199577021
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

To call something 'monstrueux' in the mid-sixteenth century is, more often than not, to wonder at its enormous size: it is to call to mind something like a whale. By the late seventeenth century, 'monstrueux' is more likely to denote hidden intentions, unspoken desires. Several shifts are at work in this word history, and in what Othello calls the 'mighty magic' of monsters; these shifts can be described in a number of ways. The clearest, and most compelling, is the translation or migration of the monstrous from natural history to moral philosophy, from descriptions of creatures found in the external world to the drama of human motivation, of sexual and political identity. This interdisciplinary study of monsters and their meanings advances by way of a series of close readings supported by the exploration of a wide range of texts and images, from many diverse fields, which all concern themselves with illicit coupling, unarranged marriages, generic hybridity, and the politics ofmonstrosity. Engaging with recent, influential accounts of monstrosity - from literary critical work (Huet, Greenblatt, Thomson Burnett, Hampton), to histories of science and 'bio-politics' (Wilson, Ceard, Foucault, Daston and Park, Agamben) - it focusses on the ways in which monsters give particular force, colour, and shape to the imagination; the image at its centre is the triangulated picture of Andromeda, Perseus and the monster, approaching. The centre of the book's gravity is French culture, but it also explores Shakespeare, and Italian, German, and Latin culture, as well as the ways in which the monstrous tales and images of Antiquity were revived across the period, and survive into our own times.

Author Biography

Wes Williams is Univerisity Lecturer, Fellow, and Tutor in French at st Edmund Hall. University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	p. x
List of Illustrations	p. xii
Note on Translations and References	p. xvi
Introduction: 'Mighty Magic	p. 1
Othello's Defence: Narrative and the Domestication of Monsters	p. 1
Aristotle, Augustine, and Andromeda: History, Methodology, and Interpretation	p. 6
Montaigne, die Aetbiopica, and the Force of the Imagination	p. 15
'Fabulous Testimonies'	p. 23
Rabelais's Monsters: Andromeda, Natural History, and Romance	p. 27
Untimely Meditations	p. 27
'A consuming fever of history'	p. 27
'Let nodiing be unknown to you'	p. 34
Contextual Monsters	p. 40
'Enfantements estranges, et contre nature'	p. 40
'Very like a whale': The Name of the Beast	p. 46
Pantagruel and Panurge: 'Making a Scene'	p. 60
'They are effectively already married'	p. 60
A Family Romance	p. 70
'Monstrueuses guerres": Ronsard, Mythology, and the Writing of War	p. 75
Love in a Time of War	p. 75
'Tel, dira I'amoureux: tit es ainsi, precisement ainsi	p. 75
'Le Persee francois': A Political Hero	p. 79
Histories of die Nation	p. 85
'Plus qu'en nul lieu': More than in Utopia	p. 85
'Las! Pauvre France, helas!	p. 88
'On diet que': Towards a History of Public Opinion	p. 95
Hercules and the Hydra	p. 99
'Is not Love a Hercules/Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?	p. 99
'Aupres des siens, au milieu de la guerre': An Aesthetics of Distance?	p. 104
'Signes seurs/parolles obscures	p. 1110
Retrospective Reading: 'Les Prognostiques stir les raiseres de nostre temps	p. 110
'D'ou vient ce nouveau monstre?': Witnesses to War	p. 113
Montaigne's Children: Metaphor, Medicine, and the Imagination	p. 121
Heliodorus: Miracles, Monsters, and Myself	p. 121
The Bishop's Daughter: 'sa fille, fille qui dure encore'	p. 121
Maternal Impression: 'vicieusement imprimez'	p. 126
First Impressions: 'De['institution des enfans'	p. 132
Paternal Impression: 'quel monstre est-ce ... ?'	p. 132
'Like sicke mens dreames, that feigne/úmaginations vaine'	p. 136
Children and Books: 'De 1'affection, des peres aux enfans'	p. 141
The Widow's Son (and Montaigne's Daughter)	p. 141
Our Childten of the Mind: 'les enfantemens de nostre esprit'	p. 146
A Monstrous Child: 'D'un enfant monstrueux'	p. 150
'Ce conte s'en ira tout simple': A Simple Tale	p. 150
'Ce double corps et ces membres divers': Metaphors and Communities	p. 156
'Ceste union Monstrueuse ou prodigieuse':Politics and Religion	p. 160
(Not) Born Yesterday: The Temporality of Reading	p. 164
Corneille's Andromeda: Painting, Medicine, and the Politics of Spectacle	p. 168
Pre-histories and Contexts	p. 168
The Theatre, the Theory, and the Image	p. 168
Re-reading Heliodorus: The Force of the Image	p. 177
Same Difference: The Painting, Again	p. 186
'In wand'ring mazeslost'	p. 194
Related Contexts : The Doctor's Story	p. 194
'Tesmoin occulaire': Autopsy, Digression, and Error	p. 200
'Mais que montre ce Monstre?': The Necessity of Politics	p. 207
Corneille's Andromeda	p. 210
'Error' or 'fiction'?	p. 210
Talking Pictures	p. 214
Andromeda's Conditionals	p. 218
Bearing Witness: Autopsy with your Eyes Closed	p. 222
Pascal's Monsters: Angels, Beasts, and Human Being	p. 228
A Question of Context	p. 228
'Quel monstre?'	p. 228
Reading in Time: 'Quand on lit trop vite ou quand on lit trop doucement on n'entend rien.'	p. 232
'Who will unravel this tangled mess?'	p. 237
Towards a Natural History of the Human (Hedelin/d'Aubignac)	p. 237
'More monstrous still than the fabled Centaurs' (Senault)	p. 247
'Un monstre pour rnoi': Between Pascal and Montaigne	p. 252
Between nothing and everything'	p. 252
'A cheval sur une tombe'	p. 258
Racine's Children: The End of the Line	p. 266
'Le Poete naissant'	p. 266
'The Story of my Father'	p. 266
'Last of the vermin I exterminated'	p. 273
'Un monstre naissant'	p. 276
'Even before birth': La Tbebaide'	p. 276
	p. 281
'Monstres sans nombre'	p. 286
'Monsters whose names I recall with regret': Berenice and Athalie	p. 286
Hopeful Monsters: Phedre	p. 290
	p. 303
'The mechanical principles of compassion'	p. 303
'Remote causes'	p. 307
'Vulgar error'	p. 310
'Stories of Pictures': The Chariclea Strain	p. 313
Bibliography	p. 317
Index	p. 339
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