In this week's Claire Chats video talk, I consider reports of monstrous births in the Tudor period and how these events were viewed and reported.
You can find Broadside Ballads on monstrous births at http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/theme/Monstrous%20births/?query=&f_Themes=Monstrous%20births.
Further reading:
- Brammall, Kathryn M. “Monstrous Metamorphosis: Nature, Morality, and the Rhetoric of Monstrosity in Tudor England.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 27, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2544266.
- Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England by Julie Crawford
- Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy
Sin has a lot to answer for, thank goodness most of us has moved on since those times.