Abstract
This essay argues that the monstrous peoples depicted on the edge of the œcumene in medieval maps of the world are not the expression of a medieval preference for the bizarre or fantastic, or the reflection of a mythically oriented consciousness. Rather, they need to be ap proached as a genuine confrontation with the strange or the alien. Drawing on insights from sociological theory, the essay suggests that as liminal figures, the monstra articulate a transcendence inherent in strangeness; at the same time they help define the borders ofgenus humanum, hence in the end to define what is one's own.
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