{"id":146,"date":"2013-04-19T23:29:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T23:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dittrickmuseumblog.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2017-10-26T10:30:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T14:30:21","slug":"monstrous-history-the-gothic-influence-of-ambroise-pare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/2013\/04\/19\/monstrous-history-the-gothic-influence-of-ambroise-pare\/","title":{"rendered":"Monstrous History: The \u201cGothic\u201d Influence of Ambroise Par\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Monsters are things that appear outside the course of Nature (and are usually signs of forthcoming misfortune).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

–Ambroise Par\u00e9<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Welcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last week, we discussed the “curious machine” of man-midwife Dr. William Smellie. This week, I will introduce Ambroise Pare and the birth of “monsters.” The images that Dr. Par\u00e9<\/b>collected in\u00a0Des Monstres et prodigies<\/i>(1573) continued to fire the imagination well into the 18th and 19th centuries, a time that witness the “birth” of Gothic monsters, as well. The Dittrick’s collection includes a fine edition of this work, and it is replete with fascinating images, some of which I will introduce today (with more to follow!)<\/p>\n

By the time Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein or Prometheus Unbound was published, the Gothic tradition was well established, though still evolving. The early romances that shaped Radcliffian Gothic were both revisited and reshaped by the sublime imagination of Romantic writers (a group to whom Shelley herself belonged.) However, increasing interest in and access to scientific discourse provided additional material; widespread debate about electrical stimulation and reflex, William Cullen and Robert Whytt\u2019s work on the nervous system, and Charles Bell\u2019s theories on the anatomy of the brain were fertile ground for imaginative speculation and certainly part of the cultural context near the time of Frankenstein\u2019s publication. The monstrosity of the man-made man nonetheless has its predecessor in the monstrosity of \u201cwoman-made man,\u201d the deformed and monstrous child of the equally horrific and mysterious womb. By the end of the 17th century, scientific societies has begun to question \u201cwonderful\u201d and monstrous accounts, but though wonders \u201chad lost their aura,\u201d[1] the monstrous continued to interest and enthrall (and sell newspapers and side-show tickets). This series of posts will explore the medicalization of birth in the eighteenth century and its representation not only in scientific debate but also in sensationalized news accounts which\u2014like early versions of the \u201cpenny dreadful,\u201d circulated tales of terror. London papers, magazines and popular miscellanies published records of horrific births, even as the \u201corphaned\u201d child and \u201cmonstrous\u201d mother became a trope for Gothic fiction.<\/p>\n

There are records of unusual, malformed or \u201cmonstrous\u201d births in every culture, from early renderings on cave walls to the detailed astrological tables of the Chaldeans and the myths of the Greeks.[2] The first formal collected account of these births is probably that of Julius Obsequens (fourth century), who listed the \u201cmiraculous\u201d births from Caesar to his present.[3] However, by the 15th century, miraculous and monstrous accounts had become a genre unto themselves; The Marvels of the East and the 1493 \u201cNuremberg Chronicle\u201d (based on The Travels of Sir John Mandeville) collected supposed monsters from distant lands[4] \u2014most of which were entirely fictitious, a few of which were likely based upon malformations and physical deformity.[5] However, arguably the most famous of collected \u201cmonster\u201d accounts is that of Ambroise Par\u00e9, surgeon and humanist of the mid-sixteenth century. His Des Monstres et prodigies (1573) was reprinted (as a full text) for more than 300 years, appearing in English translation as late as 1840 (and, in fact, again in 1982). More interestingly, the work appeared piecemeal throughout the eighteenth century, reprinted in miscellanies, magazines and popular accounts, the anomalous births passed off as current events.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The utility of Par\u00e9\u2019s text comes, in part, from its structure. Using knowledge of books on natural\u00a0history, Par\u00e9 wrote a 519-page work on reproduction in two parts\u2014the first dealt with surgical concerns, the second with monster births. Though early records also include miracle births under the \u201cmonstrous\u201d (the Greek myths of Athena and Dionysus may be thought of in this fashion) the lexicon was ever-changing. The origins of the word \u201cmonster\u201d are debatable; the Oxford English Dictionary suggests a Latin derivation, monstrum, \u201ca warning or potent,\u201d and Par\u00e9 was clearly concerned with why the \u201cnatural\u201d or normalized birth did not occur.[6] The monster is, at best unnatural, at worst, a demonized creature and punishment from God: \u201cMonsters are things that appear outside the course of Nature (and are usually signs of forthcoming misfortune).[7] Marvels, too, are \u201cagainst nature,\u201d and may\u2014along with monstrosity\u2014reveal the \u201cjudgment of God, who permits fathers and mothers to produce such abominations from the disorder that they make in copulation, like brutish beasts, in which their appetite guides them.\u201d[8] Interestingly, Par\u00e9\u2019s sixteenth-century sensibility about the cause of monstrous birth was still present and highly debated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. In next week’s post, I will talk more about the influence of Par\u00e9’s text–and provide more of the images from the Dittrick’s incredible edition of his work!
_______________<\/p>\n

\n
\n

About Brandy Schillace<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

A medical humanist, literary scholar and writer of Gothic fiction, Dr. Brandy Schillace spends her time in the mist-shrouded alleyways between medical history and literature. She is the Managing Editor,\u00a0Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry<\/i>\u00a0and has worked as an assistant professor of literature. She also leads interdisciplinary conferences abroad for IDnet and spends a lot of her time in museums and medical libraries.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n
[1]\u00a0\u201cThe 18th Century: Monsters as a Battleground for Scientific and Philosophical Debates,\u201d\u00a0A Telling of Wonders<\/i>, Exhibit of the New York Academic of Medicine Rare Book Room. Jul 7, 2012. <\u00a0http:\/\/www.nyam.org\/library\/rare-book-room\/exhibits\/telling-of-wonders\/ter9.html<\/a>.><\/div>\n
[2]\u00a0Speert, Harold.\u00a0Obstetrics and Gynecology: A History and Iconography, 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0Ed.<\/i>\u00a0(New York: Parthenon Publishing Ltd.), 361-362.<\/div>\n
[3]\u00a0Ibid., 362.<\/div>\n
[4]\u00a0Ibid, 374.<\/div>\n
[5]\u00a0The lengthy history of such accounts has been traced by Jean C\u00e9ard\u2019s\u00a0La Nature et les prodiges<\/i>and Stephen Asma\u2019s\u00a0On Monsters: An Unnatural History\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0<\/div>\n
[6]\u00a0Pallister, Janis, introduction to\u00a0On Monsters and Marvels,\u00a0<\/i>by Ambroise Par\u00e9 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), xxvii.<\/div>\n
[7]\u00a0Par\u00e9, Ambroise.\u00a0On Monsters and Marvels.\u00a0<\/i>Ed. Janis Pallister. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), 3.<\/div>\n
[8]\u00a0Ibid., 3, 5.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monsters are things that appear outside the course of Nature (and are usually signs of forthcoming misfortune).<\/b><\/p>\n

–Ambroise Par\u00e9<\/b><\/p>\n

Welcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog!<\/p>\n

Last week, we discussed the “curious machine” of man-midwife Dr. William Smellie. This week, I will introduce Ambroise Pare and the birth of “monsters.” The images that Dr. Par\u00e9<\/b>collected in\u00a0Des Monstres et prodigies<\/i>(1573) continued to fire the imagination well into the 18th and 19th centuries, a time that witness the “birth” of Gothic monsters, as well.<\/p>\n

Continue reading… Monstrous History: The \u201cGothic\u201d Influence of Ambroise Par\u00e9<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[429,111],"tags":[119,120,121,122],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/39\/2013\/06\/25104249\/2495e-image2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5785,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/5785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}