Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture Mighty Magic

Might Magic explores the place of monsters in the early modern imagination; the book is structured as a kind of journey, charting the translation, or migration of the monstrous from natural history to moral philosophy, from descriptions of creatures found in the external world, to the drama of human motivation, of sexual, political, and cultural identity. At its centre are readings of major works of French literature; from each of these focal stopping offpoints, a number of digressions lead us to better understand the issues and questions raised in each instance. Literature makes a particular kind of sense when studied in relation to what anthropologists call'thick descriptions' of context, and so I will be relating the questions and insights offered by literary writing to those produced by historians of religious conflict (this was a time of civil war and persistent rebellion), as of philosophy and science (this was also a time in which natural history and 'natural philosophy' underwent significant change). Charting a process of sustained and distinctive change, this book seeks to understand the cultural work performed by monsters inearly modern Europe - with a particular focus on France: monsters on stage as in the street; in the study as in the state, and the self.