The Monstrous World - Corporeal Discourses in Phlegon of Tralles' "Mirabilia"

Revenants, oracular heads, hermaphrodites, sex-changers, human-animal children, multiple pregnancies, births, body features ... This is just a sample of subjects that Phlegon of Tralles explored in the 2nd century AD in his "Mirabilia". This study identifies the common motifs of Phlegon's text and determines his criterion of selection: using the cultural category of "monster", it argues that Phlegon exclusively collected stories of either hybrid creatures or human "record-breakers" with respect to scale, size and multiplicity of their corporeal features. In this light, the "Mirabilia" appear to be a book on monsters and the monstrous that corresponds with a general fondness for marvels and oddities during the Roman imperial period.

List of contents

Monsters - Monstrosity - Neither Dead nor Alive - Neither Woman nor Man - Neither Human nor Animal - Revenants or Walking Corpses - Hermaphrodites: The God vs. The Monsters - Sex-changers - Freaks of Nature - Paradoxography - Deformed Slaves - The Emperor as a Patron of Monsters - Grotesque and bizarre - Corporeality - Deformation - Teratology

About the author

Julia Doroszewska is Assistant Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Silesia, Poland. Her field of interest is the literature of the Roman Empire and more particularly the writings of Phlegon of Tralles.

Product details

• Authors: Julia Doroszewska
• Assisted by: Mariusz Zagorski (Editor)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2016
• EAN: 9783631656266
• ISBN: 978-3-631-65626-6
• No. of pages: 189
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 15 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 350 g
• Series: Warsaw Studies in Classical Literature and Culture; Warsaw Studies in Classical Literature and Culture; Studies in Classical Literature and Culture
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Classical linguistics / literary studies