This edited collection explores the axis where monstrosity and borderlands meet to reflect the tensions, apprehensions, and excitement over the radical changes of the early modern era. The book investigates the monstrous as it acts in liminal spaces in the Renaissance and the era of Enlightenment. Zones of interaction include chronological change - from the early New World encounters through the seventeenth century - and cultural and scientific changes, in the margins between national boundaries, and also cultural and intellectual boundaries.

Conditions of the marriage market and sexual culture, and the needs of wealthy families and their members created social tensions in the late sixteenth and early-seventeenth century Venice. This study details these tensions and discusses concubinage- a long-term, sexual, non-marital union - as an alternate family model that soothed them by meeting the needs of families and individuals in a manner that did not offend the sensibilities of the authorities or other Venetians. Concubinage was quite common, and the Venetian community regularly accepted concubinaries, concubinal relationships, and the offspring concubinage produced.

Conditions of the marriage market and sexual culture, and the needs of wealthy families and their members created social tensions in the late sixteenth and early-seventeenth century Venice. This study details these tensions and discusses concubinage- a long-term, sexual, non-marital union - as an alternate family model that soothed them by meeting the needs of families and individuals in a manner that did not offend the sensibilities of the authorities or other Venetians. Concubinage was quite common, and the Venetian community regularly accepted concubinaries, concubinal relationships, and the offspring concubinage produced.

This edited collection explores the axis where monstrosity and borderlands meet to reflect the tensions, apprehensions, and excitement over the radical changes of the early modern era. The book investigates the monstrous as it acts in liminal spaces in the Renaissance and the era of Enlightenment. Zones of interaction include chronological change - from the early New World encounters through the seventeenth century - and cultural and scientific changes, in the margins between national boundaries, and also cultural and intellectual boundaries.