• Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim, Monsters and the Exotic in Early Medieval England, Literature Compass 6/2 (2009): 332–348

    Author(s):
    Asa Simon Mittman (see profile)
    Date:
    2009
    Group(s):
    Medieval Art, Medieval Studies, Monsters and Monstrosity
    Subject(s):
    Literature, Medieval, Middle Ages, Monsters, Art, Medieval, Other (Philosophy)
    Item Type:
    Essay
    Tag(s):
    monster theory, Sea Monsters, Medieval literature, Medieval history, Monstrosity, Medieval art, Otherness
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/2pmr-en58
    Abstract:
    The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and mon- sters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the mon- strous occurs not only in fictional travel narratives, but at the heart of construc- tions of the native hero as well as the Christian saint. In these constructions we read the central contradiction in this literature: the monster must be ‘other’ and yet cannot be absolutely so; on the contrary, the monster remains recognizable, familiar, seductive, and possible. In this essay, we discuss textual sources for the early medieval monstrous, sources ranging from Pliny to Augustine and Isidore. As we survey early medieval texts dealing with the monstrous in genres including catalog, epic, and hagiography as well as visual depictions in manuscript illustration and the mappaemundi, we consider historically particular cultural and political motivations for the representation of the monstrous in these texts, among them the early Christian conversions and shifting national boundaries.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Monograph     Show details
    Publisher:
    Literature Compass
    Pub. Date:
    2009
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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