'MONSTERS' IN THE POETICS OF 18THCENTURY SPAIN BETWEEN AESTHETIC STANDARDIZATION AND THE ATTRACTION OF THE DEVIANT.

Although 18th-century Spanish poetics may seek to rationalize aesthetic phenomena, the monstrous does not disappear from poetry or its theory. We encounter it repeatedly in various shapes and on different levels: As a story element, mostly within the context of the marvellous, as a category to describe an excessive and artificial style, or as an analytical instrument to identify deviant structures with their own unique legitimacy. What unites the individual expressions of the monstrous is a transgressive power which assumes very disparate forms depending on how the transgressed norms themselves are construed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]