Download or read book The Monstrous and the Marvelous written by Rikki Ducornet and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2021-10-20 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the great Renaissance voyages to the New World came the popularity of Wunderkammern, or cabinets of wonders, in which newly discovered monsters and marvels could be displayed. Like such a cabinet, this collection of essays surveys the monstrous and the marvelous—as transmuted in the alembic of Rikki Ducornet's open-hearted vision—in literature, art and film. For her, excess anomaly, and heterodoxy entice the imagining mind to embrace "otherness," enlarge the world and regenerate Eden.
Download or read book Marvelous Protestantism written by Julie Crawford and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2005-07-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crawford examines accounts of monstrous births in popular pamphlets along with the strikingly graphic illustrations accompanying them, demonstrating how Protestant reformers used these accounts to guide their public through the spiritual confusion and social turmoil of the time.
Download or read book Many Marvelous Monsters written by Ed Heck and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You'll giggle with glee as these crazy creatures with silly skills twist your tongue!
Download or read book The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth century Europe written by Kirk Ambrose and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richly-illustrated consideration of the meaning of the carvings of non-human beings, from centaurs to eagles, found in ecclesiastical settings. Representations of monsters and the monstrous are common in medieval art and architecture, from the grotesques in the borders of illuminated manuscripts to the symbol of the "green man", widespread in churches and cathedrals. These mysterious depictions are frequently interpreted as embodying or mitigating the fears symptomatic of a "dark age". This book, however, considers an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters in twelfth-century sculpture help audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions? Using examples of Romanesque sculpture from across Europe, with a focus on France and northern Portugal, the author suggests that medieval representations of monsterscould service ideals, whether intellectual, political, religious, and social, even as they could simultaneously articulate fears; he argues that their material presence energizes works of art in paradoxical, even contradictory ways. In this way, Romanesque monsters resist containment within modern interpretive categories and offer testimony to the density and nuance of the medieval imagination. KIRK AMBROSE is Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder.
Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous written by Asa Simon Mittman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field.
Download or read book Wonders Marvels and Monsters in Early Modern Culture written by Peter G. Platt and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""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
Download or read book The Monster in the Machine written by Zakiya Hanafi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-10-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Monster in the Machine tracks the ways in which human beings were defined in contrast to supernatural and demonic creatures during the time of the Scientific Revolution. Zakiya Hanafi recreates scenes of Italian life and culture from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries to show how monsters were conceptualized at this particular locale and historical juncture—a period when the sacred was being supplanted by a secular, decidedly nonmagical way of looking at the world. Noting that the word “monster” is derived from the Latin for “omen” or “warning,” Hanafi explores the monster’s early identity as a portent or messenger from God. Although monsters have always been considered “whatever we are not,” they gradually were tranformed into mechanical devices when new discoveries in science and medicine revealed the mechanical nature of the human body. In analyzing the historical literature of monstrosity, magic, and museum collections, Hanafi uses contemporary theory and the philosophy of technology to illuminate the timeless significance of the monster theme. She elaborates the association between women and the monstrous in medical literature and sheds new light on the work of Vico—particularly his notion of the conatus—by relating it to Vico’s own health. By explicating obscure and fascinating texts from such disciplines as medicine and poetics, she invites the reader to the piazzas and pulpits of seventeenth-century Naples, where poets, courtiers, and Jesuit preachers used grotesque figures of speech to captivate audiences with their monstrous wit. Drawing from a variety of texts from medicine, moral philosophy, and poetics, Hanafi’s guided tour through this baroque museum of ideas will interest readers in comparative literature, Italian literature, history of ideas, history of science, art history, poetics, women’s studies, and philosophy.
Download or read book Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy written by Karen Foxlee and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Magic is “messy and dangerous and filled with longing,” we learn in this brave tale of grief, villainy and redemption that borrows from the story of the Snow Queen. Set in a vast, chilly museum, the tale brings together a valiant girl, a charmed boy, a magical sword and a clock ticking down to the end of the world.”—The Wall Street Journal This is the story of unlikely heroine Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard who doesn't believe in anything that can't be proven by science. She and her sister Alice are still grieving for their dead mother when their father takes a job in a strange museum in a city where it always snows. On her very first day in the museum Ophelia discovers a boy locked away in a long forgotten room. He is a prisoner of Her Majesty, the Snow Queen. And he has been waiting for Ophelia's help. As Ophelia embarks on an incredible journey to rescue the boy everything that she believes will be tested. Along the way she learns more and more about the boy's own remarkable journey to reach her and save the world. A story within a story, this a modern day fairytale about the power of friendship, courage and love, and never ever giving up.
Download or read book Monstrous Anatomies written by Raul Calzoni and published by V&R Unipress. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores the significance and dissemination of 'monstrous anatomies' in British and German culture by investigating how and why scientific and literary representations and descriptions of abnormal bodies were proposed in the late Enlightenment, during the Romantic and the Victorian Age. Since the investigations of late 18th-Century natural sciences, the fascination with monstrous anatomies has proved crucial to the study of human physiology and pathology. Featuring essays by a number of scholars focusing on a wide range of literary texts from the long nineteenth century and foregrounding the most important monstrous anatomies of the time, this book intends to offer a significant contribution to the study of the representations of the abnormal body in modern culture.
Download or read book The Monstrous Middle Ages written by Bettina Bildhauer and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Monstrous Opera written by Charles Dill and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style. In this fresh exploration of Rameau's compositional aesthetic, Charles Dill depicts a much more complicated figure: one obsessed with tradition, music theory, his own creative instincts, and the public's expectations of his music. Dill examines the ways Rameau mediated among these often competing values and how he interacted with his critics and with the public. The result is a sophisticated rethinking of Rameau as a musical innovator. In his compositions, Rameau tried to highlight music's potential for dramatic meanings. But his listeners, who understood lyric tragedy to be a poetic rather than musical genre, were generally frustrated by these attempts. In fact, some described Rameau's music as monstrous--using an image of deformity to represent the failure of reason and communication. Dill shows how Rameau answered his critics with rational, theoretical arguments about the role of music in lyric tragedy. At the same time, however, the composer sought to placate his audiences by substantially revising his musical texts in later performances, sometimes abandoning his most creative ideas. Monstrous Opera illuminates the complexity of Rameau's vision, revealing not only the tensions within the music but also the conflicting desires that drove the man--himself caricatured by his contemporaries as a monster. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Jeremy Draws a Monster written by Peter McCarty and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alone in his room, Jeremy draws a monster. But then the monster wants lunch! As his creation takes over, Jeremy begins to wonder how he will ever get rid of the monstrous nuisance. He entertains his unwanted guest all day, but enough is enough. Jeremy finally draws him a bus ticket out of town! With a sure artistic touch and more than a dose of humor, Peter McCarty cleverly blurs the line between his own drawings and Jeremy's, and in doing so subtly questions the line between reality and imagination.
Download or read book Monstrous Fishes and the Mead Dark Sea written by Vicki E. Szabo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-01-31 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval people viewed whales in complex and contradictory ways, from marvelous to monstrous to mundane, heaven-sent or hell-bent. Despite this, whales are conspicuous in their absence from most historical and archaeological dialogues on the Middle Ages. Drawing upon a wealth of legal, literary and material evidence, this work details the ways in which whales were sought out and scavenged at sea and shore, fought over in legal and physical battles, and prized for meat, bone and fuel. Using Old Norse sagas, laws and material culture, alongside comparative historical and ethnographic evidence, Monstrous Fishes and the Mead-Dark Sea reexamines the value of whales in the medieval North Atlantic world.
Download or read book Monstrous written by MarcyKate Connolly and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reminiscent of Frankenstein and tales by the Brothers Grimm, this debut novel stands out as a compelling, original story that has the feel of a classic. The city of Bryre suffers under the magic of an evil wizard. Because of his curse, girls sicken and disappear without a trace, and all live in fear. No one is allowed outside after dark. Night is when Kymera comes to the city, with a cloak disguising her wings, the bolts in her neck, and her spiky tail. Her mission is to rescue the girls of Bryre. Despite Kym's caution in going secretively, a boy named Ren sees and befriends her . . . but what he knows will change her world forever.
Download or read book The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages written by Lisa Verner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-01-07 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the phenomena of monsters and marvels from the time of Pliny the Elder through the 14th century.
Download or read book The Interrogation of Joan of Arc written by Karen Sullivan and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transcripts of Joan of Arc's trial for heresy at Rouen in 1431 and the minutes of her interrogation have long been recognized as our best source of information about the Maid of Orleans. Historians generally view these legal texts as a precise account of Joan's words and, by extension, her beliefs. Focusing on the minutes recorded by clerics, however, Karen Sullivan challenges the accuracy of the transcript. In The Interrogation of Joan of Arc, she re-reads the record not as a perfect reflection of a historical personality's words, but as a literary text resulting from the collaboration between Joan and her interrogators. Sullivan provides an illuminating and innovative account of Joan's trial and interrogation, placing them in historical, social, and religious context. In the fifteenth century, interrogation was a method of truth-gathering identified not with people like Joan, who was uneducated, but with clerics, like those who tried her. When these clerics questioned Joan, they did so as scholastics educated at the University of Paris, as judges and assistants to judges, and as pastors trained in hearing confessions. The Interrogation of Joan of Arc traces Joan's conflicts with her interrogators not to differing political allegiances, but to fundamental differences between clerical and lay cultures. Sullivan demonstrates that the figure depicted in the transcripts as Joan of Arc is a complex, multifaceted persona that results largely from these cultural differences. Discerning and innovative, this study suggests a powerful new interpretive model and redefines our sense of Joan and her time.
Download or read book Marvelous Medical Inventions written by Ryan Jacobson and published by Lerner Publications. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did you know that a scientist discovered X-rays by accident? Or that people have been taking pain medicine for more than 5,000 years? Get ready to learn the strange stories behind inventions you use every day. From the Roman warrior with a famous false hand to the Boy Scouts who made Band-Aids a big deal, you'll find out how we got the medical wonders that help us heal faster and feel better.
