Zakiya Hanafi - The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific

Revolution

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The Monster in the Machine

Paperback: $23.95 - In Stock

978-0-8223-2568-0

The Monster in the Machine: Magic,

Medicine, and the Marvelous in the
Time of the Scientific Revolution

Cloth: $84.95 - In Stock

978-0-8223-2536-9

Author(s): Zakiya Hanafi

Published: 2000
1

Pages: 288

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Illustrations: 16 b&w illustrations

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Description
The Monster in the Machine tracks the ways in which human beings were defined in
contrast to supernatural and demonic creatures during the time of the Scientific
Revolution. Zakiya Hanafi recreates scenes of Italian life and culture from the late
sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries to show how monsters were conceptualized at
this particular locale and historical juncturea period when the sacred was being
supplanted by a secular, decidedly nonmagical way of looking at the world.
Noting that the word monster is derived from the Latin for omen or warning, Hanafi
explores the monsters early identity as a portent or messenger from God. Although
monsters have always been considered whatever we are not, they gradually were
tranformed into mechanical devices when new discoveries in science and medicine
revealed the mechanical nature of the human body. In analyzing the historical literature of
monstrosity, magic, and museum collections, Hanafi uses contemporary theory and the
philosophy of technology to illuminate the timeless significance of the monster theme. She
elaborates the association between women and the monstrous in medical literature and
sheds new light on the work of Vicoparticularly his notion of the conatusby relating it to
Vicos own health. By explicating obscure and fascinating texts from such disciplines as
medicine and poetics, she invites the reader to the piazzas and pulpits of seventeenthcentury Naples, where poets, courtiers, and Jesuit preachers used grotesque figures of
speech to captivate audiences with their monstrous wit.
Drawing from a variety of texts from medicine, moral philosophy, and poetics, Hanafis
guided tour through this baroque museum of ideas will interest readers in comparative
literature, Italian literature, history of ideas, history of science, art history, poetics,
womens studies, and philosophy.
About The Author(s)
Zakiya Hanafi is an independent scholar who divides her time between Seattle,
Washington, and Venice, Italy.

2013 Duke University Press

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