'[T]o leave the Reader in an extasie of thought or admiration': Anonymous Authors/Discerning readers. Narrating the monster in early modern England

This article investigates anonymity by analysing a corpus of street literature produced in England during the early modern period concerned with cases of monstrous birth. Specific functions of the author’s absence are identified. Scrutinising the contexts of the documents’ publication, isolating phenomena of allusion intertextuality, and highlighting authenticating strategies of the supernatural happening show how the reader has been assigned an active role. Authorial absence tends to become a means of amplifying the event itself, shifting the emphasis from the production of the text to its reception and underscoring the essential hermeneutic effort of a discerning reader.