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Beate Ochsner (Universität Mannheim)
Abstract
The article tries to retrace the discursive history of ‘monster’ from ancient times to the invention of teratology at the beginning of the 19th century. Even though most of the significations of the word ‘monster’ still exist in today’s modern languages, a merely etymological approach wouldn’t be able to show the different discursive implications, semantic derivations or, in a more ‘monstrous’ sense, deviations. In order to draw a more efficient and distinctive tableau of these varied applications, we propose to retrace the astonishing career of the monster by turning the spotlight on selected exemplary (pre-scientific and scientific) periods and texts – we also might say interfaces – in which the monster and the ‘monstrous discourses’ bear witness of religious, scientific and / or cultural change.
Bio
Beate Ochsner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Literature of the
Universität Mannheim, where she teaches media theory and French and Italian Literature. Her PhD thesis dealt with the 19th-century French author Charles Nodier (Charles Nodier. Digressionen [Heidelberg: Winter, 1998]). Her Habilitationsschrift,
DeMONSTRAtion. On the representation of monsters and the monstrous in literature, photography and film
(München: Synchron, forthcoming) examined particular media representations of the monster in 19th-century French literature (Hugo, Huysmans) and photography (Charcot, Virchow), as well as in Tod Browning’s most bizarre film, “Freaks.” Her research interests concern literature in Romance languages (especially 19th-century French and Italian literature, see e.g. Jarry: Le Monstre
1900
[Aachen: Shaker, 2002]), and media theory, in which she worked on the phenomenon of the cinematic serial killer, the theory of intermediality (Intermediale. Kommunikative Konstellationen zwischen Medien,
Tübingen, 2001), the relation between medium and memory (Medium und Gedächtnis, Frankfurt, 2004), and different aspects of Italian cinema.
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