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Monsters, News, and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern England

Dirks-Schuster, Whitney Marie
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1377008746

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
How do you know what you know? This dissertation examines the process of knowledge transfer (the interaction of multiple individuals in the process of exchanging and acting upon information which is deemed significant) through a focus on the phenomenon of monstrous births (a contemporary and non-derogatory term used to describe physically deformed humans and animals) in early modern England. In a sense, this study utilizes monsters as the contrast dye in a knowledge-transfer myelogram: monstrous births can highlight the path which knowledge takes between producer and consumer, as well as how the consumer subsequently acts upon that knowledge. A broad variety of media were utilized to this end – including printed, visual, material, oral, and manuscript sources – revealing that the nature of each medium affected the kinds of knowledge exchanged, as well as the process by which the exchange took place. Thus cheap print might privilege news of the prodigious, while gossip focused on the actions of local individuals, and manuscript culture compiled and commented upon specific cases of monstrosity. I argue that balladeers, artists, neighbors, natural philosophers, diarists, and others transferred and consumed knowledge about monsters throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries because they provided news- and gossip-worthy entertainment that could also, under the proper circumstances, reveal the will of God or the internal workings of Nature. Of course, monsters were not at all times all of these things to all people; the precise significance of monstrosity changed depending upon the media in which it was disseminated. However, I have located over 700 descriptions of perhaps 500 individual monstrous births, prodigies, and unusual creatures between 1531 and c. 1800 in a wide variety of media: more than 150 extant pieces of cheap print, 78 advertisements for monster shows, nearly a dozen painted portraits, numerous etchings, a court case and its three attendant ceramic plates, 88 articles published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, two diaries, and a manuscript monster compendium. The remarkable scale and variety of this interest vindicates the use of monstrosity to the study of knowledge transfer in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century England.
Noel Geoffrey Parker (Advisor)
David Cressy (Committee Member)
David Staley (Committee Member)
Pamela Lucchesi (Committee Member)
341 p.
History
monster; monstrous birth; early modern; England; Europe; knowledge transfer; conjoined twin; cheap print; print culture; manuscript culture; visual culture; material culture; Philosophical Transactions; Royal Society of London; gossip; commonplace book

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Dirks-Schuster, W. M. (2013). Monsters, News, and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern England [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1377008746

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Dirks-Schuster, Whitney. Monsters, News, and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern England. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1377008746.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Dirks-Schuster, Whitney. "Monsters, News, and Knowledge Transfer in Early Modern England." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1377008746

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1377008746
159
© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.