Beschreibung:
Fiction in the Archives the Monster of 1569. In 1569 Agnes Bowker, servant in Leicestershire, England, allegedly gave birth to a cat. Ecclesiastical and secular officials struggled to understand whether this bestial monstrous birth really happened or whether it masked some other witchedness such as infanticide or sorcery. The seriousness of their enquiry was heightened by the political religious and cultural uncertainties of early Elizabethan England. The documentation in this case including abundant testimony from the midwife male and female neighbours and Agnes herself touches on broad range of issues normal and abnormal childbirth gender relations and sexuality diabolism and seduction monstrosity and imagination the proceedings of community discourse and ecclesiastical.