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The Monster in the Machine - Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution (Hardcover)
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The Monster in the Machine - Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution (Hardcover)
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Total price: R2,129
Discovery Miles: 21 290
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"The Monster in the Machine" tracks the ways in which human beings
were defined in contrast to supernatural and demonic creatures
during the time of the Scientific Revolution. Zakiya Hanafi
recreates scenes of Italian life and culture from the late
sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries to show how monsters
were conceptualized at this particular locale and historical
juncture--a period when the sacred was being supplanted by a
secular, decidedly nonmagical way of looking at the world.
Noting that the word "monster" is derived from the Latin for
"omen" or "warning," Hanafi explores the monster's early identity
as a portent or messenger from God. Although monsters have always
been considered "whatever we are not," they gradually were
tranformed into mechanical devices when new discoveries in science
and medicine revealed the mechanical nature of the human body. In
analyzing the historical literature of monstrosity, magic, and
museum collections, Hanafi uses contemporary theory and the
philosophy of technology to illuminate the timeless significance of
the monster theme. She elaborates the association between women and
the monstrous in medical literature and sheds new light on the work
of Vico--particularly his notion of the "conatus"--by relating it
to Vico's own health. By explicating obscure and fascinating texts
from such disciplines as medicine and poetics, she invites the
reader to the piazzas and pulpits of seventeenth-century Naples,
where poets, courtiers, and Jesuit preachers used grotesque figures
of speech to captivate audiences with their monstrous wit.
Drawing from a variety of texts from medicine, moral philosophy,
and poetics, Hanafi's guided tour through this baroque museum of
ideas will interest readers in comparative literature, Italian
literature, history of ideas, history of science, art history,
poetics, women's studies, and philosophy.
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