Monsters, Marvels and Miracles

Monsters, Marvels and Miracles PDF

Author: Leif Søndergaard

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13:

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People at all levels of medieval society were extremely fascinated by the strange and unknown in the world around them. They tried in various ways to cope with the unfamiliar mysterious, monstrous, marvellous, and miraculous forces in order to understand them and give them a coherent meaning. Voyages were undertaken to remote parts of Asia. Some journeys were real, while others were mere "armchair travels". Most people took the descriptions in travel accounts to be the ultimate truth about the mysterious places in lands far away from Europe. Scholars formed a general view of the God-created cosmos and its seemingly mysterious character, expressed in encyclopedic works, summae, and in medieval maps. Monsters, Marvels and Miracles examines such journeys and landscapes in the Middle Ages.

Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles

Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles PDF

Author: Timothy S. Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13:

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This collection of essays examines medieval and early modern perceptions of the marvelous and the monstrous. The essays investigate the nature of those phenomena and how people of these periods experienced them and how they recreated that experience for others. The essays trace the development of representations of marvels and explicate individual incarnations of monster and miracles. They analyze the importance of marvelous difference in defining ethnic, racial, religious, class, and gender identities to ask what legacy the medieval confrontations with marvels left for the modern world. These excellent essays look at issues that have long perplexed readers, such as the meaning of marvels, and whether we can read them in earnest or whether they can be appreciated only as play. The different authors bring their expertise to the fore to discuss the development of thoughts on marvels from the classical tradition through the concept's development in the medieval and early modern tradition. This collection is essential reading for any analysis of the marvelous in these periods and the state of scholarship surrounding them.

The Monstrous Middle Ages

The Monstrous Middle Ages PDF

Author: Bettina Bildhauer

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1786831759

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The figure of the monster in medieval culture functions as a vehicle for a range of intellectual and spiritual inquiries, from questions of language and representation to issues of moral, theological and cultural value. Monsters embody cultural tensions that go far beyond the idea of the monster as simply an unintelligible and abject other. This text looks at both the representation of literal monsters and the consumption and exploitation of monstrous metaphors in a wide variety of high and late-medieval cultural productions, from travel writing and mystical texts, to sermons, manuscript illuminations and maps. Individual essays explore the ways in which monstrosity shaped the construction of gendered and racial identities, religious symbolism and social prejudice in the Middle Ages. Reading the Middle Ages through its monsters provides an opportunity to view medieval culture from fresh perspectives. It should be of interest in the concept of monstrosity and its significance for medieval cultural production.

Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture

Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture PDF

Author: Peter G. Platt

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780874136784

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""The marvelous follows us always" - or so the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi asserted in 1587. The essays in this book collectively make the case that this assertion could be an epigraph for the Renaissance. For Wonder was a concept absolutely central to the early modern period. Encompassing both inquiry and astonishment, "wonder" indeed followed the Renaissance everywhere - into redefinitions of the mind, the body, art, literature, the known world. Often called the age of discovery, the Renaissance should also be seen as the age of the marvelous." "However, defining just what la maraviglia would have meant for Patrizi and his age is no small task." "This volume, then, seeks to explore early modern views of wonder and the marvelous by revealing the complexity of la maraviglia in the Renaissance."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature

Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature PDF

Author: S. Lightsey

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-08-06

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 0230605648

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This book examines marvels as tangible objects in the literary, courtly, and artisanal cultures of medieval England, but these clever devices, neither wholly semiotic nor purely positivist objects, are imbued with diverse cultural significance that illuminates in new ways the familiar literature of the Ricardian period.

The Calling of the Nations

The Calling of the Nations PDF

Author: Mark Vessey

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0802092411

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This wide-ranging collection moves from the earliest Pauline and Rabbinic exegesis through Christian imperial and missionary narratives of the late Roman, medieval, and early modern periods to the entangled identity politics of 'mainstream' nineteenth- and twentieth-century North America.

Much Maligned Monsters

Much Maligned Monsters PDF

Author: Partha Mitter

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1992-08

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780226532394

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In this fascinating study, Partha Mitter traces the history of European reactions to Indian art, from the earliest encounters of explorers with the exotic. East to the more sophisticated but still incomplete appreciations of the early twentieth century. Mitter's new Preface reflects upon the profound changes in Western interpretations of non-Western societies over the past fifteen years.

Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law

Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law PDF

Author: Alex Sharpe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1135182655

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This book considers the legal category 'monster' from theoretical and historical perspectives and deploys this category in order to understand contemporary anxieties surrounding transsexuals, conjoined twins and transgenic humans.

Darkness, Depression, and Descent in Anglo-Saxon England

Darkness, Depression, and Descent in Anglo-Saxon England PDF

Author: Ruth Wehlau

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 3110661977

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This collection of essays examines the motifs of darkness, depression, and descent in both literal and figurative manifestations within a variety of Anglo-Saxon texts, including the Old English Consolation of Philosophy, Beowulf, Guthlac, The Junius Manuscript, The Wonders of the East, and The Battle of Maldon. Essays deal with such topics as cosmic emptiness, descent into the grave, and recurrent grief. In their analyses, the essays reveal the breadth of this imagery in Anglo-Saxon literature as it is used to describe thought and emotion, as well as the limits to knowledge and perception. The volume investigates the intersection between the burgeoning interest in trauma studies and darkness and the representation of the mind or of emotional experience within Anglo-Saxon literature.