The idea of monstrosity, and its cultural trajectory through the scientific and popular imagination

This dissertation is concerned with an archetypal idea, the idea of monstrosity. It would be too ambitious to claim that this dissertation is the history of an idea, rather, it is the more modest project of tracing the trajectory of the idea of monstrosity through some of the domains of human endeavour. As such it is also an interdisciplinary project, thus insights have been gained from anthropology, the history of science, as well as literature and, perhaps more fruitfully of all, the occult