Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in first class little used condition. No notes or highlighting. Dustcover is worn. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The Book of Genesis declares that “there were giants on the earth in those days.” Surveying the cultural history of the giant from Old Testament times to the early modern period Walter Stephens argues that the modern view of giants as jovial creatures of the imagination has obscured earlier systems of belief that presumed the historical reality of giants and defined them as races of inherently evil hominids. In the Bible they are portrayed as evil Goliaths to be slain by heroes or swept away by the Flood and they appear in other ancient and medieval narrative with a force suggesting they should not be dismissed as mere fictions. Giants in Those Days examines how and why ancient and medieval scholars developed a “science” of gigantology that solemnly discussed the fierce Cyclops and Titans of Greek mythology the invincible foemen of epic and the monstrous cannibals of romance and folklore. This provocative book reveals that during the Renaissance self-styled historians exploited belief in the existence of giants so as to further the expansionist and colonial policies of European monarchs. The giant princes of Fran?ois Rabelais (c. 1495-1553) were inspired by decades of such nationalistic propaganda which converted monstrosity into greatness and redefined bigger as better. Demonstrating that fashionable modern views of Rabelais’s “folkloric” giants seriously misconstrue Gargantua and Pantagruel Stephens restores them to the cultural context of their era. (MP)