Keywords: Cynocephali, Monstrous Races, Cannibalism, John Mandeville, Age of Discovery Depictions of man-eating cynocephali appear in late-fifteenth-century German printed editions of John Mandeville’s Travels, embedded in the texts of a 1481 Basel edition and a copy in a 1499 Strasbourg edition. In the Basel edition, a cynocephalus is depicted on his hands and knees biting… Continue reading The Dog-Headed Cannibals of John Mandeville’s Travels
Keywords: Cynocephali, Monstrous Races, Mongols, Primitiveness, Otherness The post-Columbus period marked a shift from representing the monstrous races as more abstract ‘wonders’ or ‘marvels’ from its medieval tradition to being representations of the knowable foreign ‘Other.’ On Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina (1516), the cynocephali are located between northern India and the territory labelled ‘Mongal’ and… Continue reading Did Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina (1516) portray Mongols as dog-headed Cynocephali?
Keywords: Human-animal hybrids; Monstrous Races; Monstrous Births; Wild Man; Werewolves Representations of human-animal hybrids and the concept of shape-shifting in both literary sources and the visual arts captured the early modern European imagination. This is particularly evident in the prevalence of pictorial prints featuring these creatures dated in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that… Continue reading Representations of Monsters in German Renaissance Prints
Keywords: Monstrous Races, Cynocephali, Human-animal hybrids, Cannibalism, Dehumanisation That all races, ethnicities, man and woman all belong to the same species sounds like a truism. However, this was of some point of contention during the sixteenth century. The discussion surrounding non-European foreigners paralleled with the discussion involving the mythological monstrous races, including hybrid canine creatures.… Continue reading The Canine Motif and the Dehumanisation of Foreigners
Keywords: Werewolves, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Cannibalism, Petter Stump, Wolves One of the earliest werewolf fables originated from the ancient festival of Zeus in Arcadia, Greece. Participants would choose a piece of meat from a mixture of both animal and human sacrifices. Those who unwittingly chose and ate the entrails of a human sacrifice would transform into… Continue reading Werewolves, Wolves, and the Intersections between Human and Animal
