Monsters and Marvels. Alterity in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
About the Book Series
This series is dedicated to the study of cultural constructions of difference, abnormality, the monstrous, and the marvelous from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including the history of science and medicine, literary studies, the history of art and architecture, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, critical race studies, ecocriticism, and other forms of critical theory. Single-author volumes and collections of original essays that cross disciplinary boundaries are particularly welcome. The editors seek proposals on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to: the aesthetics of the grotesque; political uses of the rhetoric or imagery of monstrosity; theological, social, and literary approaches to witches and the demonic in their broader cultural context; the global geography of the monstrous, particularly in relation to early modern colonialism; the role of the monstrous in the history of concepts of race; the connections between gender and sexual normativity and discourses of monstrosity; juridical and other legal notions of the monstrous; the history of teratology; technologies that mimic life such as automata; wild men; hybrids (human/animal; man/machine); and concepts of the natural and the normal.
Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy
1st Edition
By Guy Tal
December 01, 2025
The figure of the witch is familiar from the work of early modern German, Dutch, and Flemish artists, but much less so in the work of their Italian counterparts. Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy seeks to explore the ways in which representations of witchcraft emerged from and coincided with...
Exceptional Bodies in Early Modern Culture: Concepts of Monstrosity Before the Advent of the Normal
1st Edition
Edited
By Maja Bondestam
December 01, 2025
Drawing on a rich array of textual and visual primary sources, including medicine, satires, play scripts, dictionaries, natural philosophy, and texts on collecting wonders, this book provides a fresh perspective on monstrosity in early modern European culture. The essays explore how exceptional ...
Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350-1750: Real, Imagined, Metaphorical
1st Edition
Edited
By Robin O'Bryan, Felicia Else
December 01, 2025
Not since Edward Wood’s Giants and Dwarfs published in 1868 has the subject been the focus of a scholarly study in English. Treating the topic afresh, this volume offers new insights into the vogue for giants and dwarfs that flourished in late-medieval and early modern Europe. From chapters dealing...
Maternity, Monstrosity, and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare
1st Edition
By Sara Burdorff
January 07, 2025
This work uses an adaptation of monster theory to rethink the foundations of epic-heroic immortality. Rather than focusing on a specific monster or monsters, the author identifies the belly-monstrous as a crucial point of intersection between mothers and warriors in traditional narratives of the ...