Contexts -- Monstrosity
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Monstrous births were often attributed to the sins of their
parents.
Some of the breadth of applicability of the term is evident in
Samuel Johnson's definition of
monster and related words.
Monsters have a political dimension
as well: as Fred Botting argues in "Frankenstein and the
Language of Monstrosity,"
Monsters appear in literary and political writings to signal both
a terrible threat to established orders and a call to arms that
demands the unification and protection of authorised values.
Symptoms of anxiety and instability, monsters frequently emerge
in revolutionary periods as dark and ominous doubles restlessly
announcing an explosion of apocalyptic energy.