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Session 11: Witches, Etc.
Chair: Christopher Auld

The Nymph and the Witch: Female Magical Figures in The Works of Paracelsus
Peter Mario Kreuter
"Paracelsus-Projekt", Medizinhistorisches Institut der Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

The natural philosopher, theological thinker and physician Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), played an important role for the perception of the female sex in the 16th century, a role not always easy to understand. On one hand, he still lived in a world in which the word woman was a kind of synonym for ‘sin’ or ‘inferiority’. On the other hand, he was the one who recommended clearly that women’s medical treatment should be different than that of men because of the differences of their bodies, an idea which today is regaining its place in the medical world.
But Paracelsus was not only occupied by this very practical questions. He mentioned either the witch or the nymph repeatedly. Melusina takes a widespread place in his discussion of the world of the natural spirits. And one should not forget that Paracelsus created his very own paradogm of the witch, differing totally from the common paradigms such as the Malleus maleficarum. His interest in nymphs and witches was that of a scolar, not that of an inquisitor. He believed in their existence, but that was not enough: Paracelsus wanted to understand what they are.
The aim of the presentation ist it to follow the reflections of Paracelsus about nymph and witch, and we shall always see how he explained this two female magical figures.

A Mirror of Monsters. Escapes of Revenge Tragedy
Anna Kowalcze-Pawlik
The Jagiellonian University, Poland

In his 1587 pamphlet William Rankins voiced disdain of all things theatrical as the site where “Men doo then transforme that glorious image of Christ into the brutish shape of a rude beast, when the temple of our bodies whiche should be consecrate vnto him is made a stage of stinking stuffe, a den for theeues, and an habitation for insatiate monsters”. In order to express a violent critique of the “abuses” of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, the passage employs discourse of the monstrous that belongs to the liminal sphere of human body. It is the human body which becomes a signifier of the abuse, or the limit of representation, and comes to be identified with moral, ideological and sociopolitical transgression, most vividly articulated within the space of the theatre.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the symbolic function of the playhouse as a locus communis of antithetical significance, in which conflicting narratives of human bodies become interpreted as sexualized, stigmatized or traumatized “insatiate monsters” of the stage. I focus on chosen characters of the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in order to observe the ways in which they strive to escape the established order of the play, thus mirroring the cultural practices of the Elizabethan and Jacobean imagination.
Simultaneously, I examine metaphors of the monstrous/monstrous metaphors in the sphere of 16th and 17th century theatre criticism in order to see how the ostensibly strictly organized and carefully structured space of Elizabethan and Jacobean imagination uses the discourse of corporeal monstrosity to allocate transgression of social and cultural boundaries within the space of the theatre.

Chapter X
Hester Reeve
Department of Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Whilst there has been much discussion around the ‘recognised’ monster of historical prejudice towards the ‘not normal’ and that of literary device, there has been less discussion around the conceptual significance of the category monstrosity and less still is even murmured around the positive identification with 'Being-monster.' How acknowledged are the ideas and experiences of the various monsters themselves as opposed to those that the supposed 'not monsters' spin around them? What if to be truly virtuous in agency, where the content seeps off the book’s pages and uncontrollably infects everyday procedure, is tantamount to monstrosity (taken here as a positive possibility) and to misinterpret monstrosity is to resist ethical potential? The latter considerations have direct implications for me as a feminist, a thinker and a live artist; they form the area of concern that informs my proposed contribution for the Monsters’ conference.  
My proposed ‘paper’  - "Chapter X” will be a literary-philosophical piece that proposes itself as a post-scripted final chapter to Mary Shelley’s 1818 “Frankenstein” which, keeping the letter format of the novel, is a letter from myself addressing Mary Shelley and her book itself as monstrous (in my positive use of the term). Not only are the ice caps melting, metaphorically releasing her living-dead creature from a 200-year deep freeze, but all our notions of time, being, biology, society and value have been revolutionized since her day. My continued narration of the novel no longer fictionalises the monster but speaks from the embodied experience of monstrous reality as a female authoress.
Correlations between ‘monstrous,’ ‘the vulnerable self’ and ‘dangerous art work’ will be suggested. “Chapter X” will be accompanied by photographic ‘illustrations’ (which will be projected during its recital), the result of a ‘performance for camera’ carried out at Mary Shelley’s graveside.

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