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summary
A culture defines monsters against what is essentially thought of as human. Creatures such as the harpy, the siren, the witch, and the half-human all threaten to destroy our sense of power and intelligence and usurp our human consciousness. In this way, monster myths actually work to define a culture's definition of what is human. In Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, a broad range of scholars examine the monster in Italian culture and its evolution from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Editor Keala Jewell explores how Italian culture juxtaposes the powers of the monster against the human. The essays in this volume engage a wide variety of philological, feminist, and psychoanalytical approaches and examine monstrous figures from the medieval to postmodern periods. They each share a critical interest in how monsters reflect a culture's dominant ideologies.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. pp. 1-2
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  1. Half-title
  2. pp. 3-4
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  1. Title
  2. p. 5
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  1. Copyright
  2. p. 6
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. 5-6
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. 7-8
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  1. Introduction: Monsters and Discourse on the Human
  2. pp. 9-24
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  1. Part 1: Modern Horrors
  1. 1. Creatures of Difference: Myths of Monstrosity in Savinio's La nostra anima
  2. pp. 27-50
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  1. 2. "Mon maitre, mon monstre": Primo Levi and Monstrous Science
  2. pp. 51-64
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  1. 3. Monstrous Murder: Serial Killers and Detectives in Contemporary Italian Fiction
  2. pp. 65-88
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  1. 4. The Mother of All Horror: Witches, Gender, and the Films of Dario Argento
  2. pp. 89-106
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  1. Part 2: Monsters and Conception
  1. 5. Dante's "dolce serena" and the Monstrosity of the Female Body
  2. pp. 109-136
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  1. 6. "A la tetta de la madre s'apprende": The Monstrous Nurse in Dante's Grammar of Selfhood
  2. pp. 137-152
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  1. 7. Incredible Sex: Witches, Demons, and Giants in the Early Modern Imagination
  2. pp. 153-176
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  1. Part 3: Monsters and Poetics
  1. 8. Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in Dante's Divine Comedy
  2. pp. 179-190
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  1. 9. Monstrous Language, Monstrous Bodies: Bartolotti's Macharonea Medicinalis
  2. pp. 191-202
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  1. 10. Girolamo Parabosco's L’Hermafrodito: An Irregular Commedia Regolare
  2. pp. 203-221
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  1. 11. Ogres and Fools: On the Cultural Margins of the Seicento
  2. pp. 222-246
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  1. 12. Reforming the Monster: Manzoni and the Grotesque
  2. pp. 247-262
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  1. Part 4: The Monster as Discourse
  1. 13. The Monster as a Refugee
  2. pp. 265-278
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  1. 14. Per Speculum Melancholiae: The Awakening of Reason Engenders Monsters
  2. pp. 279-296
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  1. 15. Monstrous Knowledge
  2. pp. 297-310
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 311-314
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 315-326
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