MONSTER! A Historical Foray Into The Monstrous

Monsters in human form, such as Count Dracula, are a relatively recent phenomenon. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, monsters were often hybrids of humans and animals. In addition to mythical creatures, humans, animals and plants that deviate from the appearance defined as ‘normal’ are also considered monstrous. Normal is - unsurprisingly - the white, able-bodied man. According to this patriarchal and racist world view, women, BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) or people with disabilities are abnormal by definition.

When Travelling... Strange Animals And Monstrous Hybrid Creatures

Travelogues, whether from Antiquity, the Middle Ages or Early Modern times, often contain descriptions of mythical creatures such as unicorns and griffins or strange humans and hybrid creatures. Eyewitness accounts are often cited as proof of their existence. In his Medulla Mirabilia Naturae, Sulzbach court official Johann Heinrich Seyfried reports on Brazilian mermen and sea bishops - the latter look suspiciously like a mixture of human and ray. Where there is a sea bishop, there must of course be a sea monk.

In addition to these spiritual sea creatures, Seyfried's work also includes forest and water people as well as a Scythian lamb. This is also called a tree lamb and (supposedly) grows out of a plant. At the nave, the lamb is connected to a flexible plant stem, which allows it to graze comfortably, swaying back and forth. Unfortunately, the lamb is unable to move and must starve to death after eating the grass within swinging distance. Incidentally, the tree lamb sparked heated debates among philosophers and botanists during the Renaissance - they could not agree on whether and if so where the plant animal existed.

Wonder peoples and monsters are an integral part of the medieval world view. Strange people, dragons, giants and other monsters do not exist as metaphors, but as ‘real’ creatures. For St Augustine, monsters were not the spawn of evil, but part of creation.

So when medieval travelogues contain descriptions of monsters or wondrous people and animals, they are primarily concerned with depicting the unknown and thus representing creation in its entirety. On the one hand, they symbolise the majesty of creation as a whole and, on the other, they are an expression of the divine power, i.e. God's creativity.

In the late Middle Ages, the meaning of the monsters changed. They were no longer God's creatures, but increasingly products of the human imagination with solely metaphorical meaning.

Moral Monsters and Monstrous Pathologies

During the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, the supernatural and the monstrous is no longer part of the real world, but increasingly an object of scientifically research and medical explanations. The monstrous shifts into the realm of the pathological.

In the transition from the 18th to the 19th century, for example, the concept of the moral monster emerged. The French discourse theorist Michel Foucault deals with this topic in his lecture The Abnormal and explains: While the body monster stands out externally through visible anatomical deviations, the moral monster is defined by internal deviations and is not recognisable as a monster at first glance. This makes it all the more threatening for society.

The young disciplines of criminology and psychiatry are now labelling criminals as monsters. Criminals are considered mentally defective - the reason for crime, so the idea goes, is not found in social circumstances but in the inherited mental disposition of individuals. Here, too, we can see how closely ideas of monstrosity are interwoven with social Darwinist and racist ideologies.

The ‘unnatural’ is now scientifically tamed, monsters are organised and classified in natural history collections. Cabinets of curiosities exhibit people and animals. They are the forerunners of fairs and freak shows, where people who outwardly deviate from the norm are presented as entertainment. The fear of the different is mixed with the power over the supposedly abnormal and with the fascination of the uncanny.