Dear Peter,
I don't know what chronological period you are working in, and
unfortunately I can't think of any specific examples off-hand, but here
are a few Renaissance titles which may be of interest to you. I am
currently in the final stages of completing a Ph.D. which focuses on
alternative forms of cultural production in ducal Florence from the 1540s
to the 1560s, and have found some of the works listed below very useful
from an interpretative perspective:
Barkan, Leonard, Natures Work of Art: the Human Body as Image of the
World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975)
Brammall, Kathryn M., Monstrous Metamorphosis: Nature, Morality, and the
Rhetoric of Monstruosity in Tudor England, Sixteenth Century Journal, 27,
1 (1996), 3-21
Camporesi, Piero, Rustici e buffoni (Turin: Einaudi, 1991)
Carroll, Linda L., Machiavellis Veronese Prostitute: Venetia Figurata?,
in Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed.
by Richard Trexler (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1994),
93-106 [interesting for the allegorical picture which it provides]
Ciard, Jean, La nature et les prodiges (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1977)
Motz, Lotte, Giants in Folklore and Mythology: A New Approach, Folklore,
93, 1 (1982), 70-84
Pari, Ambroise, On monsters and marvels, translated with an introduction
and notes by Janis L. Pallister. (1982)
Park, Katharine, and Lorraine J. Daston, Unnatural Conceptions: the Study
of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,
Past and Present, 92 (1981), 20-54
Scribner, Bob, Reformation, Carnival and the World Turned Upside-Down,
Social History, 3, 3 (1978), 303-29
Stephens, Walter, Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and
Nationalism (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989)
Wilson, Dudley, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages
to the Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1993)
In bocca al lupo!
Domenico Zanre
Department of Italian,
19 Woodland Road,
University of Bristol,
BRISTOL BS8 1TE.
[e-mail: [log in to unmask]]
>
> My name is Peter Golden. I am a Ph.D. student at University College
> Dublin. At the moment I am researching physically ugly characters in
> Italian literature. If anybody, in the course of their own research,
> comes across fictional characters who might be deemed ugly I would be
> happy to hear about it. Thanks.
>
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