Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination.

Jewell, Keala, ed. Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination

Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. 325 pp. illus, index. n.p. ISBN: 0-8143-2838-5.

In her introduction, Jewell writes that "monster myths are linked indissolubly to the definition of the 'human"' and suggests that abandoning the humanistic model of subjectivity "will, we might surmise, entail a post-monstrous world." The fifteen essays in this collection engage a wide variety of philological, feminist, and psychoanalytical approaches to examine monstrous figures in Italian culture from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Includes name, subject, and title index. Essays of interest include: Jewell, Keala, "Introduction: Monsters and Discourse on the Human"; Yavneh, Naomi, "Dante's 'dolce serena' and the Monstrosity of the Female Body"; Cestaro, Gary P., "'A la tetta de la madre s'apprendre': The Monstrous Nurse in Dante's Grammar of Selfhood"; Stephens, Walter, "Incredible Sex: Witches, Demons, and Giants in the Early Modern Imagination"; Jewiss, Virginia, "Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in Dante's Divine Comedy"; Ansani, Antonella, "Monstrous Language, Monstrous Bodies: Barlott i's Macharonea Medicinalis"; Magnanini, Suzanne, "Girolamo Parabosco's L'Hermafrodito: An Irregular Comedia Regolare"; Canepa, Nancy L., "Ogres and Fools: On the Cultural Margins of the Seicento."