Ethical Code

Università della Calabria

Strange Newes out of Kent
(Anonymous, 1609)
It is the story of a headless child, whose birth took place on 30 July 1609 in Sandwich, Kent: an anonymous wandering
woman bursts into a small rural community, upsets it with her monstrous delivery and vanishes from the scene as she had appeared. Here the deformity of the creature is used to stigmatize an entire social group: the begging vagrants.
Keywords: Female Marginality; Gender History; Headless Monster; Monstrous Birth; Vagrancy.

Gods Handy-worke in Wonders
(Anonymous, 1615)
It is the story of a headless child, whose birth occurred on 25 July 1615 in Faversham, Kent: a vagabond named Martha Haydnot is suddenly seized with painful contractions and forced to give birth in a barn. As in the previous case, the female protagonist’s irregular life and the resulting divine punishment are instrumentally used by the author to contribute to the debate on the unresolved matter of vagrancy.

Keywords: Female Marginality; Gender History; Headless Monster; Monstrous Birth; Vagrancy.

A Wonder Woorth the Reading (Anonymous, 1617)
It is the story of a monstrous birth, which took place in Kentstreet, London, on 21 August 1617: without a head but with two horns, the creature is read by the author of the document as a stigma for the decadence not only of the mother’s mores, but also of the entire city of London. The English capital, deprived of its guides, seems to be moving towards an inexorable apocalypse.

Keywords: Gender History; Headless Monster; London Moral Decadence; Monstrous Birth; Sexual Misconduct.

A Strange and Lamentable Accident (John Locke, 1642)
It is the story of a headless child, whose birth occurred in Mears Ashby, Northamptonshire, in 1642: through the vicissitudes of the main character, Mary Wilmore – who is punished with the birth of a monstrous child for refusing a sacred rite – the author John Locke attacks all the agitators of false doctrines by stigmatizing a rebellious woman who does not adheres to religious conformity.

Keywords: English Civil Wars; Gender History; Headless Monster; Monstrous Birth; Religious Non-Conformity.

It is the story of the birth of a headless child occurred in Kirkham, Lancashire: the civil war rages in the country and
the victory of the Puritan Parliament is around the corner. In this context, Mrs. Haughton publicly claims her role as a realist and Catholic dissident and for this is punished with the birth of a headless son. As a consequence, the monstrous
birth is not intended to be a punishment for a morally reprehensible action, but for a heterodox ideology.

Keywords: Catholic Recusancy; English Civil Wars; Gender History; Headless Monster; Monstrous Birth.

It is the story of a monstrous child, whose birth took place in Tillingham, Essex. Mary Adams is a woman with psychotic traits, characterized by a strong religious disturbance up to the self-celebration of herself as a new Virgin Mary waiting for the revived Messiah. The woman, who curses the members of the Puritan Parliament on her deathbed, is punished both as a representative of a sectarian movement and an enemy of the prevailing political faction.

Keywords: English Civil Wars; Gender History; Headless Monster; Monstrous Birth; Sectarianism.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Six English seventeenth-century accounts of acephalous births are the starting point for a reflection on the meaning assumed by the “out of norm” body in the early modern period: not a fortuitous occurrence, but a breach through which one could look inside the portentous machine of the universe. In an incredible interweaving of theology, politics and medicine, the human monster became a sign of divine wrath and a powerful means of social control. What did the birth of a headless child mean in this context? What mythical distances and horizons did it feed on? How did it intertwine together the punishment for a single parental blame and the warning for entire communities, social groups, and state structures? This study takes into account the social imaginary and the contexts in which the six stories were thought up, written, printed and read, and investigates the ways in which these narrations stigmatized a specific pathology of the human body, making the lack of the head a physical and metaphysical symbol of disorder in the private or public sphere, and therefore an effective means of repression and control. Keywords: Acephalia; Body Politic; Early Modern England; Gender History; Monstrous Births.