Description
This study centers on the idea of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. Monsters were seen as something to be feared, and were often located in the geographical margins of the world. This study looks at how these ideas have been treated in the established scholarship, and how they are intertwined in the minds of medieval authors and artists.
This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of "monster studies," though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This study sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.
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