Afternoon of Alterity - Nazareth College

ecomes more humanistic in nature: “Then there is an island inthe Red Sea where there is a race of people” who “know all humanspeech. When they see someone from a foreign country, they namehim and his kinsmen with the names of acquaintances” (“Wonders”197). By the end of the text, the description seems to capture a holyman declaring his sins: “I am dead not unjustly, but rightly… God’sjudgment stands against me… For that reason am I dead, and for thisam I brought to the midst of the kingdom of hell” (“Wonders” 203).There is an obvious progression from the early text to the latter. Atthe beginning, the focus is on the oddities in appearance and mannerof these peoples, while towards the middle, the text moves to a groupcapable of human speech. By the end, there is a clear belief systempresent, justifying the actions against, and the treatment of, a sinneragainst God. Essentially, as Austin asserts, this hierarchy shows a“gradual movement up the scale of humans towards groups withincreased social and linguistic organization” (Austin 31). Specifically,this can be seen through the gradual change in food, manners, socialgroupings, and religious associations. As Bildhauer and Mills discussin The Monstrous Middle Ages:Monsters [ ] also defined the ‘right’ choice of food and tablemanners, which had an important function in demarcatingsocial groups and decorous behaviour. Similarly monstersshowed deficiencies and oddities in other areas importantto the definition of conduct, such as clothing, speech, andweapons. Here, the monstrous other helped to identify thevery concept of courtliness (11).It would then seem that Wonders is built upon the notion ofsalvation, an institutional body, meant to protect, preserve, andfurther the peoples of the East by offering them a path away fromthe monstrous. There are clear descriptions of what are more or lesscaitlin garvey 119