The Politics of Obscenity in Les Monstres des hommes, a Thirteenth Century Manuscript.
Résumé
Written at the end of the thirteenth century and still little-known today, Les Monstres des hommes is the first catalog of monsters in the French language. The author offers a virulent social and political interpretation by comparing monsters to his contemporaries, to the detriment of the latter. Les Monstres des hommes allows us to approach the notion of obscenity from different angles: monsters living on the borders of the Orient are ob-scena, off-stage, but is obscenity inherently present in an encyclopedic work of which it is the main subject? Are marginal phenomena thereby made central again? Monsters are obscene by their physical otherness and deviant behavior, but does obscenity genuinely lie in abuses by the powerful? Therefore, obscenity is not a fixed category, but rather an unveiling performance which suddenly leads to reflections on the norm and the gap.