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Abstract

This article traces discourses of monstrosity underpinning depictions of the Mongols in letters, official documents, purported eyewitness accounts, and so-called travel narratives produced in Western Christendom during and in the immediate aftermath of the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe and the Rus’ principalities in the late 1230s–early 1240s. Much current historical work on the Mongol invasion is concerned with distinguishing fact from fiction, locating the historical sources of Western writers’ information, and offering explanations for their reliance on myth. While keeping this research in mind, I argue that reports of monstrous Mongols constituted not simply ignorant attempts to explain an apparently inexplicable event, but served to contain irruptions of emotion in response to a deeply traumatic experience, while forming part of a propagandistic strategy to induce people out of passivity and toward military resistance.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed discussion of anti-Mongol propaganda, see Giffney (2004).

  2. A version of this paragraph appeared in Giffney, 2002, 188–193.

  3. For a discussion of how the word ‘Tartar’ was applied to the Mongols, see Connell, 1973, 115–137.

  4. For example, Butler (1990) and Foucault ([1969] 2002).

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Giffney, N. Monstrous Mongols. Postmedieval 3, 227–245 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2012.10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2012.10

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