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Book Review: Emblematic monsters: unnatural conceptions and deformed births in early modern Europe

In this engaging book, Alan W Bates surveys monstrous births in Europe between 1500 and 1700. The book has two central arguments. First, based on internal evidence and modern knowledge of birth defects, Bates argues that the accounts of monstrous births in early modern broadsheets, sermons, tracts, and learned journals describe real cases and that their authors strove to be as accurate as possible. Second, these monstrous births were interpreted in the framework of the emblem tradition that was all the rage in early modern Europe. In turning monstrous births into emblems, early modern Europeans interpreted them as signs or portents. They did not invent monsters to make a point, but they believed that God did so.