This project, centered in the popular literature of early modern England, examines the perception of a complex system of relationships between hidden or inward qualities of individuals and the means by which they may be physically manifested through physiognomy, deformity, and the occurrence of wonders. As the project argues, the detectable and readable signs of moral and physical deformity were frequently treated as integral to the process by which normally invisible qualities of character and/or hidden desire might be expressed. To early moderns, these conceptions provided a theoretical means by which transgressive inwardness, hypocrisy, and even concealed sin might be detected and addressed. A tradition of popular literature and performance that develops from the sixteenth century reflects many of the same issues of concealed inward selves in the literal and metaphorical treatments of "monsters." Some of the most conspicuous examples of these narratives are the sixteenth century broadsheet accounts of so-called monstrous births that record the appearance of children and animals with varying degrees of physical birth deformities. These literatures provide a means through which to read and interpret such creatures as embodying assertions of divine recrimination and correction, presenting "monsters" as the natural products of the spiritually compromised environments into which they were born.Taken together with representations of deformity and transgression in the early modern playhouse and in scientific/religious texts, these literary productions evince changing views of social order and disorder in the period. As this study shows, the rhetoric of monstrosity frequently served as a cultural tool of exclusion and condemnation to reinforce the boundaries of moral order, legitimating religious and political structures of authority that sought to restore order in the wake of disruptive, transgressive action. In the three decades following Elizabeth I's accession to the throne in 1558, this discourse broadened significantly to eschew the necessity of physical bodies in the interpretation of "monstrous" inward corruption. This shift is most visible in the popular literature of true crime, where the terms monster and monstrous become evocative, figurative epithets used to describe criminals perceived as morally depraved, whose transgressive deeds were depicted as expressions of turbulent souls and inward vices.This study takes as its subject the multifaceted representation of transgression in the popular literature of early modern England, primarily focusing upon dramatic performance and ephemeral print. Further, by exploring literary tropes of the monster that surface in various forms over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this project investigates the related attitudes toward transgression and social order in the period. Special regard is paid to representations of the divided or multi-faceted self as prone to affecting contradictory and/or conflicted attitudes and desires. These portrayals provide a crucial lens for characterizing the relationships between the subjectivities depicted in such literatures, as well as the real social and moral power structures that they reflect and within which they were produced. Finally, the representation and framing of inwardness in the drama and ephemeral print of the period theorize a complex notion of early modern subjectivity that anticipates and engages with the related processes of interpretation and signification. Thus, it is the perceived connection between the inward thoughts or desires of subjects and the literary depiction of the physical and/or behavioral manifestation of those desires that this project most closely addresses.
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