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Monsters in the Middle Ages assumed significant epistemological functions, providing an image of the complete 'other' in the human quest for the self. Since late antiquity teratology played a big role in literature, art, philosophy, and religion, but meaning and relevance of monsters changed from author to author (the same applies to their visual representation). This article provides an overview of how the image of the monster changed throughout times and how individual writers evaluated them.

Keywords: Monsters, Middle Ages, Voyagers, Epistemology, Writers

This essay attempts to draw connections between medieval maps and their many monsters, digital cartographical interfaces, and modern experiences of the world. Each impacts our understandings of the others. The medieval notion of speculum - the metaphorical mirror that allows us to see our worlds and ourselves more clearly - draws attention to the very process of spectatorship. The modern notion of "telesthesia" (perception at a distance) borrowed from Cultural Studies, becomes a unifying discourse, allowing us to bridge the gap between medieval and modern, East and West, us and them, viewer and monster.

Keywords: Monsters, Telesthesia, Maps, Cartography, Perception

Images of magical evil populate community festivals in various European countries, especially Spain. There, ritualized images of demons, devils, ogres, deformed animals and so on are rife in village fetes. Symbolizing evil and horror, monster effigies perform burlesque aggressions in the streets before they are killed off in typical Christian morality plays. This paper describes some of these representations in rural Spain and goes on to interpret the monster vs. man narrative from an ethnological and a psychological viewpoint, utilizing a model of “redemptive violence”.   

Keywords: Monsters, Anthropology, Spain, Violence, Morality

According to one of the most influential definitions, formulated by Michel Foucault in his Les anormaux, the monster is, since the Middle Ages, a violation of a “bio-juridical” order. In critically discussing the historical plausibility of this claim this article explores medical and philosophical conceptions of monsters between medieval and early modern period, addressing in particular the matter of the relationships between first and second causes in nature's errors. The main authors dealt with are Thomas Aquinas, Ambroise Paré, Francisco Toledo and Fortunio Liceti. What emerges is that up to the 17th century...

Keywords: Monsters, Aristotelian Biology, Metaphysics, Medical Anthropology, Etiology

Campanella’s reflection about teratology goes through some of the main issues in his thought and more in general the philosophical debate of his time: the controversial about the human generation ex purefatio, the organic and functional distinction man-woman, the theory of imagination, the moral responsibility and the contra natura sin, the possibility of creating artificial life. Especially, and this is the essential point for Campanella, this theme regards the heart of the theological anthropology, questioning the very concept of humanity...

Keywords: Monsters, Campanella, Generation Theories, Imagination, Nature

The theme of monsters crosses all ages and survives through the centuries, provoking questions in such diverse fields as physiology, medecine, philosophy and even morality. If examples of vegetals with remarquable structures have been many times related by naturalists since antiquity, thus contradicting the monotony of the development cycles, it is nonetheless the human monster which attracts all the attention, either hostile or curious. From the point of view of disciplines such as medecine or chemistry, the 18th century often appears as a transition century...

Keywords: Monsters, Medical Anthropology, Naturalism, Diderot, Enlightment

At the end of the Eighteenth century, anatomists aimed at detaching themselves from a mere classifying and descriptive approach to establish a philosophic science studying form patterns and relationships. Organic forms can either be part of a research program, grounded on how their components coordinate and are related from a functionalist perspective, as Cuvier maintained, or explained by placing them within a pattern, a single framework of organization (unity of composition), as it is for Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. These positions came to a clash in 1830, resulting in what...

Keywords: Monsters, Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier, Balzac, Biology

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This paper looks at John Florio’s comments on translation — especially in the Epistle Dedicatorie and To the Curteous Reader of his 1603 translation of Montaigne’s Essayes — and examines the extent to which Florio conceived of translation as a monstrous birth of knowledge. Crucial to this exploration are a remark of Florio’s friend Giordano Bruno that claimed science, or knowledge, was the offspring of translation; Florio’s definition of "móstro" from his 1598 Italian-English dictionary A Worlde of Wordes; and some of Montaigne’s remarks about the multiplicity and hybridity of both the essay...

Keywords: Monsters, Translation, John Florio, Montaigne, Definition

The Quart livre of Rabelais is marked by the variety of monsters and at the same time by the way they are represented ie, their description. Our study observes the modality of fictional workings, and fictional monsters, among which Bringuenarilles (Chapter XVII) is an example of an "impossible" monster.

Keywords: Monsters, Rabelais, Literature, Grotesque, Fiction

This contribution to the contemporary figure of monstrosity looks for a common feature that may characterize and explain what we recognize as monster in the West. The article takes into account the rebel robot that must be destroyed because it threatens humanity: prevailing in the imaginary of popular culture, this story is the resumption of the myth of the Golem, endlessly reproduced in novels and movies, since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The Golem, intelligent and humanoid creature is monstrous because it lacks a soul, a spiritual and transcendental principle that defines human being...

Keywords: Monsters, Imaginary, Popular Culture, Golem, Post-Humain

This article attempts to delineate the history of the monstruos by recognizing inside it the manifestation of severance between the contingent and the trascendent world. The monster embodies the boundary of the everlasting paradox of human existence, in the balance between the desire of knowing and the impossibility of drawing completely on knowledge.

Keywords: Monsters, Manifestation, Bounderies, Knowledge, Trascendent