Chapter 4 - Size and Shape as Aspects of Early Performance

Summary

The degree to which people are depicted as monstrous in the premodern tradition relies heavily on how the natural climate they occupy is viewed and affects them, and how they civilize or are made savage by the spaces in which they dwell.

Recent studies of the “monstrous” and its depiction in the European Renaissance often look at the socialization of premodern disability. In the passage quoted above, for example, Bearden juxtaposes normate and “monstrous” with the civilized and “savage.” For disability theory, the use of this kind of opposition clearly indicates the social model. Indeed, the premodern era's many fictional representations of differently sized bodies positively invite its application. Premodern art and literature seem to have been fascinated with bodies that were seen to be either diminutive or extravagant in size, and this is clear in even the earliest medieval literary examples. Framing so-called “dwarfs” or “giants” as somehow being objects of spectacle, wonderment, or derision was not new to medieval Europe. But again and again, the era's popular literature testifies to a predilection for associating atypically dimensioned bodies with recurring, characteristic behaviours or roles. In the premodern era, the abnormally sized or shaped body could project meaning far beyond the mere fact of physical difference.

The genre of medieval romance often features mischievous or messenger dwarves and menacing, malignant giants. For the latter, an obvious example is the oversized Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: that “aghlich mayster” and “half etayn” or half-giant sent to challenge King Arthur's court. Another famous example is Chaucer's Sir Oliphant, the “perilous man of dede” from the Tale of Sir Thopas. Another still is the violently envious Sir Valentyne, slain by Sir Launfal in his eponymous verse romance. All of these well-known fourteenth-century literary giants share semantic affinity beyond their large size: each demonstrates how the premodern imaginary associated giant stature with potential threat, with violence, and with malignancy. Some two centuries later, in Book 1 of his allegorical romance The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser's destructive giant Orgoglio is used at various points to represent: 1). The prideful arrogance of both man and the Fiend, 2). An earthquake from the Book of Revelations, and 3). A manifested warning of the approaching Last Judgment. These are just a few of the character's potential referents.