ABSTRACT
This edited collection explores the axis where monstrosity and borderlands meet to reflect the tensions, apprehensions, and excitement over the radical changes of the early modern era. The book investigates the monstrous as it acts in liminal spaces in the Renaissance and the era of Enlightenment. Zones of interaction include chronological change – from the early New World encounters through the seventeenth century – and cultural and scientific changes, in the margins between national boundaries, and also cultural and intellectual boundaries.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 2|16 pages
The Mermaid of Edam Meets Medical Science
Empiricism and the Marvelous in Seventeenth-Century Zoological Thought
chapter 3|18 pages
Bleeding Bodies and Bondage
Signifiers of Illegitimacy in Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Magi and Andrea della Robbia’s Tondi at the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence
chapter 4|16 pages
“In Questa Guerra Tutti Ne È Stà Turchi”
The Turk as Ultimate Enemy in Sixteenth-Century Italy
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chapter 5|16 pages
Alpine Cannibals
French Renaissance Representations of the Alps and Their Residents
chapter 7|16 pages
Columbus’s Monsters
One-Eyed Men, Dog-Headed Men, Cannibals, and Amazons in the Accounts of the First Two Columbian Voyages
chapter 8|16 pages
Monsters and Men in the Wild New World
A Study of the Monstrous in Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuovo
chapter 9|19 pages
“A True Narrative of the Grievous Affliction of Roger Sterrop in Somer Islands”
Demonic Possession and the Puritan Project in Early Seventeenth-Century Bermuda
chapter 11|17 pages
Bigfoot Meets the Wild Man
Monstrous Borders Between Contemporary American and Early Modern European Culture
