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Monstrous Alterity in Early Modern Travel Accounts: Lessons from the Ambiguous Medieval Discourse on Humanness
- L'Esprit Créateur
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 48, Number 1, Spring 2008
- pp. 81-95
- 10.1353/esp.2008.0008
- Article
- Additional Information
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When early modern explorers encountered new peoples, medieval notions of difference, passed down through verbal and pictorial maps, shaped their perceptions. Pre-modern ideas of monstrous races and a vibrant medieval discourse on what constitutes a human paved the way for eventual questioning of the status of indigenous peoples.