Chapter 5

I agree with Matt, that it's interesting how societies' view of monsters changed depending on what was occurring historically. What caught my attention was when the authors wrote, "The portentous interpretation of monsters as objects of horror did not slowly fade of disappear, but reasserted itself in waves according to local circumstance" (187). They then go on to explain how each country's focus on prodigies coincided with times of unrest or instability. For example, Germany's took place during the Reformation in the late fifteenth-century. This made sense to me, but I wondered why exactly it was so. Are the authors arguing that societies' view of monsters as horrors was simply due to their mindsets at the time? Or do societies' sort of "use" monsters to explain their instabilities? It was explained earlier that many saw monsters as horrors in that they were warnings from God that something wasn't right. Did societies then think that monsters were horrors simply because they felt that God must be making some comment about the turmoil they were in?