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Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern Culture
Mighty Magic
Wes Williams
360 pages
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36 black-and-white halftones
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234x156mm
978-0-19-957702-6
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Hardback
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26 May 2011
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- A new and compelling account of the interconnectedness of history, medicine, politics, myth, and literature in early modern culture
- Charts the process of sustained and distinctive change in the cultural significance of the monstrous from the mid-sixteenth century to the late seventeenth
- Includes original readings of major works of French literature by Montaigne, Rabelais, Ronsard, and Racine
- All French passages are translated
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 '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 of monstrosity. Engaging with recent, influential accounts of monstrosity - from literary critical work (Huet, Greenblatt, Thomson Burnett, Hampton), to histories of science and 'bio-politics' (Wilson, Céard, 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.Readership: Students and scholars of early modern literature and culture
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Wes Williams, Tutor in French, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
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"This is a book born of long and deep reflection on its subjects' writings (especially Montaigne's), and attends to both the tiny stitches of an essay, play or fiction, and to the larger design. As Williams maps the linkages and the meanings to which they lead, he can listen with a tuner's sensitivity to the internal rhymes in a line of Racine and to their equivalents in Ted Hughes's rendering, or, zooming out, can give a sweeping overview of the poliical context. His methods persuasively combine material historicity with some inspiration from "universal" deconstructionism and psychoanalysis; the results are rich and layered, and show how barren theoretical purism can be." - Marina Warner, Times Literary Supplement
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List of images
Note on translations and references
Introduction: 'Mighty Magic'
1: Rabelais's monsters: Andromeda, natural history, and romance
2: 'Monstrueuses guerres': Ronsard, mythology, and the writing of war
3: Montaigne's children: metaphor, medicine, and the imagination
4: Corneille's Andromeda: painting, medicine, and the politics of spectacle
5: Pascal's monsters: angels, beasts, and human being
6: Racine's children: the end of the line
Epilogue: Between testimony and hearsay
Bibliography
Index
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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