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Monsters in literature --- Animals, Mythical, in literature --- Curiosities and wonders in literature --- Literature, Medieval

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What kind of being did a sailor see, when he was confronted with a mermaid? A demon, a fairy, a monster, or only an extraordinary marine mammal? Transmitted by the tradition of ancient natural history the European universities faced many creatures belonging to natural science as well as to mythology, which still could be observed throughout the world. While medieval sholarship treated those beings as subjects for demonology, early modern scholars started to rationalize the sirens and satyrs and developed new models of explanation. Throughout hundreds of academical disputations the debate on hybrid creatures can be followed up to the time of Linné and Buffon and the zoological classifications of the 18th century. This study reconstructs the discussions of hybrid creatures as part of the Early Modern change of paradigms and the longue durée of ancient and medieval natural history with the help of five examples, sirens, satyrs, giants, pygmies, and dragons.

Comparative religion --- Animals, Mythical --- Natural history --- Animals, Mythical, in literature --- Demonology --- Identification --- History --- Study and teaching (Higher) --- Animals, Mythical - Europe - Identification - History --- Natural history - Study and teaching (Higher) - Europe --- Demonology - Europe - History --- Animals, Mythical, in literature. --- History.

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Bestiaries --- Didactic literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) --- Literature, Medieval --- Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval --- Animals, Mythical, in literature --- Animals

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Taking Ovid's Metamorphoses as its starting point, this book analyses fantastic creatures including werewolves, bear-children and dragons in English literature from the Reformation to the late seventeenth century. Susan Wiseman tracks the idea of transformation through classical, literary, sacred, physiological, folkloric and ethnographic texts. Under modern disciplinary protocols these areas of writing are kept apart, but this study shows that in the Renaissance they were woven together by shared resources, frames of knowledge and readers. Drawing on a rich collection of critical and historical studies and key philosophical texts including Descartes' Meditations, Wiseman outlines the importance of metamorphosis as a significant literary mode. Her examples range from canonical literature, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, to Thomas Browne on dragons, together with popular material, arguing that the seventeenth century is marked by concentration on the potential of the human, and the world, to change or be changed.

English literature --- Thematology --- Ovid --- anno 1600-1699 --- anno 1500-1599 --- Animals, Mythical, in literature. --- Metamorphosis in literature. --- Monsters in literature. --- History and criticism.

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Bestiaries --- Animals --- Animals, Mythical --- Animals in literature. --- Bestiaires --- Animaux --- Animaux fabuleux --- Animaux dans la littérature --- History and criticism. --- Folklore --- Histoire et critique --- Didactic literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) --- Animals, Mythical, in literature --- Animals in literature --- Literature, Medieval --- Animaux dans la littérature --- Bestiaries - Dictionaries. --- Didactic literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) - Dictionaries. --- Animals, Mythical, in literature - Dictionaries. --- Animals in literature - Dictionaries. --- Literature, Medieval - Dictionaries. --- Animals - Folklore - Dictionaries. --- Animals, Mythical, in literature. --- Bestiaria. --- Bestiarier. --- Bestiaries. --- Bestiarium. --- Didactic literature, Latin (Medieval and modern). --- Dieren. --- Fabeldjur --- Literature, Medieval. --- Middeleeuwen. --- Mittelalter. --- Mythische wezens. --- Folklore.