The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific RevolutionThe 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. |
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Page 2
... deformed births were regarded as sinister presages: the infants were thrown into the Tiber or hurtled over a cliff; the Etruscans threw them in the ocean, or incinerated them; the Longo- bards drowned or suffocated them; the ancient ...
... deformed births were regarded as sinister presages: the infants were thrown into the Tiber or hurtled over a cliff; the Etruscans threw them in the ocean, or incinerated them; the Longo- bards drowned or suffocated them; the ancient ...
Page 3
... deformed being, but a sign in the same category as portentum, prodigium, and ostentum, terms belonging to the divinatory sciences, only migrating later through association to the natural sciences.6 A monstrum (from monere, to warn or ...
... deformed being, but a sign in the same category as portentum, prodigium, and ostentum, terms belonging to the divinatory sciences, only migrating later through association to the natural sciences.6 A monstrum (from monere, to warn or ...
Page 4
... deformed infant gave rise not to terror but to passionate scientific interest, focused especially on the tax- onomical scaffolding required to construct a strong lexical foundation for a systematic categorization of birth defects ...
... deformed infant gave rise not to terror but to passionate scientific interest, focused especially on the tax- onomical scaffolding required to construct a strong lexical foundation for a systematic categorization of birth defects ...
Page 7
... deformed fetuses, anomalous births such as twins, animals with humanoid parts, humans with animal-like features, peoples that have different colored skin or unusual customs, all these provide the stuff of monsters. And that reality ...
... deformed fetuses, anomalous births such as twins, animals with humanoid parts, humans with animal-like features, peoples that have different colored skin or unusual customs, all these provide the stuff of monsters. And that reality ...
Page 20
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Contents
1 | |
16 | |
Monstrous Machines | 53 |
Medicine and the Mechanized Body | 97 |
Vicos Monstrous Body | 135 |
Monstrous Metaphor | 187 |
Afterword | 218 |
Notes | 219 |
Bibliography | 253 |
Index | 267 |
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Common terms and phrases
able according admiration ancient animal appear Athanasius Kircher authors automatons beasts beautiful become begins believed birth blood body bring called cause conceit continuous created creatures deformed demons described desire divine effect especially example exist explains eyes fact figure first forces function garden give hand head heart human Ibid idea imagination Italy kind knowledge learning living look machine magic material matter means mechanical medicine metaphor mind mirror monsters monstrous moral motion move movement museum nature object Opere organs origin passions philosophical physical pleasure political Porta practice principle produce provides question reading reason refers regarding relation remains rhetorical sacred scientific seen sense sirens sort soul spirit statues things thought tion transformed turn understand Vico Vico’s virtue women wonder writes