SPOTO 2013 (7SDB2018)
Stephanie Irene Spoto
Monsters and the Monstrous, vol. 3, nr. 2, 2013,
pp. 97-110. (pdf.)
Abstract
Anxieties surrounding the
demonic and female beauty are connected in sixteenth and seventeenth century
printed illustrations. With developments in printing methods early modern readers
increasingly demanded images to accompany texts, and often these illustrations
focused on the monstrous, the exotic, and the erotic. Edward Topsell’s History
of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (1658) and Ulisse Aldrovandi's Monstrorum
Historia (1642) are copiously illustrated bestiaries which focus on the sensual
and the dangerous aspects of the monsters, often including evidence of
witchcraft in the narrative and conflating issues of monstrosity with contemporary
witchcraft fears. This article looks at instances such as these which express
the mating of the monstrous and the beautiful witch in seventeenth century
monster stories, and explores the implications of this exoticised female and
monstrous sexuality, and the attempts to catalogue, and therefore manage, it.
Attention is given to the figure of Lilith, the mythical first wife of Adam,
whose depictions in early modern illustrations represent her as simultaneously beautiful,
monstrous, and dangerous. Her often half-human/half-animal appearance, coupled with
her explicitly eroticised present in the images and accompanying texts, attests
to the contemporary fears surrounding sensual pleasure, the female body, and
the animalistic and monstrous nature of women's desire.
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