Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self
Part of the Clarendon Lectures in English series
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Author Description
Metamorphosis is a dynamic principle of creation, vital to natural processes of generation and evolution, growth and decay, yet it also threatens personal identity if human beings are subject to a continual process of bodily transformation. Shape-shifting also belongs in the landscape of magic, witchcraft, and wonder, and enlivens classical mythology, early modern fairy tales and uncanny fictions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This collection of essays, given as the Clarendon Lectures in English 2001, takes four dominant processes of metamorphosis: Mutating, Hatching, Splitting, and Doubling, and explores their metaphorical power in the evication of human personality. Marina Warner traces this story against a background of historical encounters with different cultures, especially with the Caribbean. Beginning with Ovid's great poem, The Metamorphoses, as the founding text of the metamorphic tradition, she takes us on a journey of exploration, into the fantastic art of Hieronymous Bosch, the legends of the Taino people, the life cycle of the butterfly, the myth of Leda and the Swan, the genealogy of the Zombie, the pantomime of Aladdin, the haunting of doppelgangers, the coming of photography, and the late fiction of Lewis Carroll.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates how the concept of metamorphosis functions as a primary metaphor for the construction and instability of human identity. Marina Warner, a distinguished scholar of myth and fairy tales, utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze how shape-shifting narratives reflect cultural anxieties and creative processes. By synthesizing classical mythology, biological observation, and historical colonial encounters, she argues that the fluidity of the self is a central, recurring preoccupation in Western and post-colonial literature.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- A four-part analytical framework categorized by Mutating, Hatching, Splitting, and Doubling.
- Comparative studies of Ovidian tradition alongside Taino legends and Caribbean folklore.
- Interdisciplinary analysis linking biological life cycles to artistic representations in the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Lewis Carroll.
Scope Limits
- The text does not provide a comprehensive history of all metamorphic myths globally.
- The analysis focuses primarily on Western literary traditions and their specific colonial intersections rather than an exhaustive anthropological survey.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and critics frequently cite this text as a sophisticated exploration of the intersection between classical literature and cultural identity. Readers often note the academic density of the prose, which requires familiarity with the primary texts discussed to fully grasp the author's nuanced arguments.
Page Count:
284
Publication Date:
2004-01-01
ISBN-10:
0191037486
ISBN-13:
9780191037481
Non-Fiction
Philosophy
Folklore
English
Literary Criticism
English & College Success
Mythology