Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe

Misreading the Body: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober

“…blindness and the gift of prophesy. In the first scene with Zaches, Hoffmann makes use of what Disability Studies calls the medieval model of attributing the occurrence of congenital deformity to divine punishment for misdemeanors or "Strafe des Himmels" (10). The notion of a fated abnormality is signaled in the epithets "unselig" (unfortunate, 7) and "vermaledeit" (damned, 42).…”

“…A. W. Bates, in his book Emblematic Monsters, analyzes reports of birth defects between 1500 and 1700 and concludes that these were always special and exceptional cases, and argues that "the rationalisation of monsters" happened later during the Enlightenment when the science of teratology developed. 10 This rationalization involves the medical assessment of what is known as the abnormal "monstrous" body; its aim is to attempt to free the impaired body from the fictional spaces of fable, folklore, and myth by using taxonomical methods.…”