Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe (review)

This book joins a growing literature on monstrous births in early modern Europe. It fits well within that literature, responding to, challenging, and, especially, building on earlier research. Bates has several explicit goals for this work, all of which are intriguing but which he accomplishes with varying degrees of success.

One of his principal intentions is to illustrate the various types of accounts of monstrous births between approximately 1500 and 1700, because though he argues that the "history of monstrous births cannot be reduced to a single narrative" (p. 199), he does believe that certain commonalities can be identified. So he stresses that descriptions of monstrous births were "real" and most often based on eyewitness accounts; authors were very concerned about the "accuracy and credibility of their accounts" (p. 7) and in consequence rarely fabricated. Because he admits that early modern accounts are often "hard to substantiate . . . with external evidence" (p. 56), he bases this conclusion on the fact that the extant descriptions are retrospectively diagnosable by modern investigators (p. 98 passim).

Another similarity he identifies among accounts is the "search for hidden 'truths'" (p. 199) in which authors actively "invited" (p. 8) their readers to participate. Each monster required individual interpretation, because the interest generated was not simply a desire for news of the exotic or strange; rather, monstrous births were interesting because they "were thought to have a deeper meaning" (p. 11). This is a characteristic Bates sees in all three genres he considers: popular literature (equated with broadsides and ballads), journals (represented by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Miscellanea Curiosa, and Journal des Savans), and books. In part, the meaning in all three genres is related to the search for order out of chaos: accounts of monstrous births in popular literature "were a response to disorderly events, but one that was intended to promote order" (p. 16) and the "concept of monsters as part of a greater order underpinned much of the scholarly effort that was devoted to their description" (p. 22).

Though his suggestions that there are some common elements among different genres is sensible and in keeping with the evidence he cites, Bates surprises the reader by also claiming that the various types of authors shared "no common motivation for writing 'if we set aside motivation of selling publications'" (p. 12). Not only does this seem to be a direct contradiction of one of his central theses, it is hard to understand why he would dismiss the economic motive so precipitously. And indeed he subsequently acknowledges that "the inclusion of monsters in wonder books and obstetrical works may have served to broaden their potential readership" (p. 104). Several other apparent paradoxes confuse Bates's presentation, the most troublesome of which occurs during his discussion of Fortunio Liceti's De Monstrorum (1616). Bates considers this work to represent a "magisterial dismissal" of "the 'vulgar' concept that Nature simply made a mistake" (p. 81), but when he quotes Liceti himself, the result is contradictory: "Monsters are produced merely when nature makes a mistake, and sin cannot result in the appearance of a monster" (p. 81).

Bates also seems somewhat undecided regarding how interested in causation the authors of the multiple narratives were. He claims that though popular authors understood, discussed, and might have devoted significant attention to contemporary debates surrounding the physical causes of monsters, "they were not emphasized" (p. 201), but his evidence is unconvincing, especially since he devotes an entire chapter to contemporary explanations of causation. Key also to Bates's agenda is the desire to "integrate historical and medical approaches" (p. 7), particularly as he relies so heavily on retrospective diagnosis to prove the "accuracy" of early modern accounts. But here, too, the results are mixed. The main attempts at diagnosis are presented in a distinct chapter immediately preceding the conclusion (though there are...