{"product_id":"monstrous-imagination-9780674586499","title":"Monstrous Imagination","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat woeful maternal fancy produced such a monster? This was once the question asked when a deformed infant was born. From classical antiquity through the Enlightenment  the monstrous child bore witness to the fearsome power of the mothers imagination. What such a notion meant and how it reappeared  transformed  in the Romantic period are the questions explored in this book  a fascinating study of theories linking imagination  art  and monstrous progeny.  Down through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance  philosophers and men of science rendered their learned opinions on the power of the female imagination to dominate  and thus distort  the act of procreation. Drawing on biological and physiological texts from classical times through the nineteenth century  Marie-Hlne Huet presents this argument as it evolved and as it reflected doubts about the force of paternity. She shows how  in the late eighteenth century  the discussion shifted from the scientific sphere to the aesthetic  and how the idea of imagination as monstrous progenitor eventually became a Romantic conceit. In reinterpreting art as teratology  however  Romanticism reclaimed the subversive power of imagination as a masculine attribute; it was now the artist as monstrous father who would generate new forms. From Ambroise Pare to Diderot  from Shelley to Hawthorne  Balzac and Villiers de lIsle-Adam  as Huet demonstrates  the monster and the work of art challenged preconceived ideas of the natural order of thingsand disclosed  for all to see  the silent desire of their makers: to procreate without the other.  In this analysis of monstrous genesis Huet examines anew such questions as the authorship of Frankenstein  the birth of the Tussaud wax museum  and the ancient legend of the golem. Bringing together philosophy and science  aesthetics and popular culture  Monstrous Imagination is a marvel of intellectual historya remarkable account of how the imagination has manifested itself  above all  in theory.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646964621365,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674586492","price":35.77,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674586499.jpg?v=1781683704","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/monstrous-imagination-9780674586499","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}