| dc.description | The idea of "monstrosity' has traditionally born a close relationship to attitudes regarding abnormality and deformity, noting that helped observers define for their respective societies the concept of "other". Throughout history observers suggested that the normal and natural was superior to what they deemed imperfect, unusual, or exotic in mankind. This study investigates early modern English uses of the term "monster", highlighting a transformation that build upon earlier attitudes but ultimately created an innovative and rhetorically powerful category of monstrosity, differing from that discussed by classical and medieval writers. In 1550, as over the preceding millennia, all monsters were by definition physically malformed and misshapen. In contrast, by 1625 a monster could be a human whose deformity was hidden from view. Late Tudor and early Stuart observers manipulated the perceptions of their audience in an attempt to persuade the population; that individuals who transgressed--whether morally, religiously, politically, or socially--were as inhuman as the physically exotic. Understanding well the connection between motivation and compulsion (as well as the inability of contemporary authorities to impose the latter), late Tudor and early Stuart writers developed and vigorously exploited the invective rhetoric of monstrosity within their polemic in order to draw their audiences into an alliance that made the reader as much an adversary of the despised activity or belief as was the author in question. The enemies such authors identified as "monsters" were various and included such marginal groups as heretics, rebels, transgressive women, drunkards, and sexual deviants. It is testament to the power of the rhetoric of monstrosity, however, that not all victims were powerless outsiders; indeed, it was possible for denigrated women and heterodox Christians to employ this polemical device against powerful members of society such as defenders of patriarachal, religious, and political norms. | en_US |
