Abstract

Primarily interpreted as a monstrum, or divinatory sign, the monster not only served as an oppositional being useful in defining the 'upper' and 'lower' thresholds of humanity, until modern times it was also thought to bear a portentous message from the forces of the sacred. This interest of this dissertation lies precisely in what happened to the concept of monstrosity during the period when it became divorced from its previously sacred function, during the seventeenth century in Italy. ;Chapter one. "Traditions, Typologies, and Historiographies" explodes the received historical wisdom by which secularization is seen to operate in the history of monster literature. The notions of 'discursive contexts' and 'cognitive schemas' are proposed as alternatives to the 3-fold genre typology and evolutionary secularization model that often structures the narrative told by historians of teratology. ;Chapter two. "Monstrous Matter" examines scientific literature of the early modern period, primarily focussing on natural philosophy , natural magic manuals , and demonology texts . An alternative cognitive schema is proposed--according to descriptive, manipulative, and coercive modes--based on different formulations of the relations between the Aristotelian categories of matter, form and spirit which are shown to thoroughly inform seicento thought. ;Chapter three. "Monstrous Machines" looks more closely into the coercive approach to monsters, in which man-made creations of a technological nature pose the greatest threat of monstrosity. This formulation is the only one that retains a connection with a sacred view of the phenomenal world. Definitions of natural, artificial, and demonic magic provide a useful opening into these ideas. The chapter explores humankind's relations with its technological creations in the manufacture of monsters through eugenics and as exemplified by the persistent, suggestive figure of the speaking statue, or automaton, appearing in many museum catalogues and collections . ;Chapter four. "Monstrous Metaphor" shows the ambivalent relation of repugnance and desire that we maintain with our monstrous other. The siren figure, present in rhetorical treatises , represents a temptation to lapse into pure corporality, to abandon the productive industriousness by which we believe our humanity is maintained