Beasts
Books on Beasts (Exhibit Case)
De la Vipere, Moyse Charas, 1670.
The Resurrectionist: the lost work of Dr. Spencer Black, E.B. Hudspeth, 2013.
Dante's Inferno, translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M.A., from the original of Dante Alighieri, and illustrated with the designs of M. Gustave Doré,
La Danse des Morts, 1875.
A Medieval Bestiary, t1971.
The Bestiary: a book of beasts, with more than one hundred and twenty-five marvelous illustrations, m
THE RESURRECTIONIST
Written in 2013 by E.B. Hudspeth, this book is part biography and part reformatting of Dr. Spencer
Black. Dr. Black was a medical doctor turned freak-show enthusiast from the mid to late 1800's into the turn of the century. Much could be said about Dr. Black as his mad antics are the stuff of legend, but his "research" is a look into a modern theoretical study of mythological creatures. He created detailed hypothesis of the skeletal, muscular, and circulatory systems for 11 creatures based on his extensive dissections of human and animals. Presented here is the Chimæra Incendiarius from Greek Myth.
LA DANSE DES MORTS
(The Dance of Death)
This small poem book tells the story of the end times when the dead will rise from the grave and take the living to judgment. This book, published in 1875, is just one of the countless examples of the Danse Macabre, a literary device used to illustrate the uselessness of wealth in life as death comes for us all in the end. This particular book gives an address from death and a reply in turn from 39 people, from Pope to Peasant. Each set of eight couplets are meant to show how each person reacts to death and whether or not they are worthy of heaven.
PHYSICA CURIOSA
sive Mirabilia Nature et Artis
This nearly 1400 page book contains a collected work of Gaspar Shott. Shott was a German Jesuit mathematician, physicist, scientist, and natural philosopher, who did extensive research into mechanical physics. This work was bound posthumously and is the complete Physica Curiosa (curious physics) which details the wonders of our natural world. This includes angels and demons, humans, monsters, animals, and much more. The book is full of illustrations in order to better show the things Shott is describing. The page shown is describing various humanlike sea monsters, the triton, the sea satyr, the sea monster who looks like a monk, and the sea man with a bishops habit. These creatures are interestingly not in the section on monsters, but in the section on humans, leading us to believe they saw some of these creatures as somewhat human.