Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds

'Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds' explores stories of transformation, in poetry, fiction, and painting. Myths and tales of metamorphosis, from Leda and the swan to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, command great excitement and pleasure among readers, yet the idea of shape-changing threatens personal identity at a profound level. The book explores this paradox, and shows how new ideas about human personality, such as the zombie and the doppelganger, develop in the encounter between cultures.

'Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds' explores stories of transformation, in poetry, fiction, and painting. Myths and tales of metamorphosis command great excitement and pleasure among readers, yet the idea of shape-changing threatens personal identity at a profound level. This book explores this paradox.

Richly associative and exhilarating...Warner runs the gamut of the Gothic, as familiar with aliens as with zombies, as curious about the Shakespearean and Coleridgean imagination as about the Blakean daemonic sprit of Philip Pullman's sensibility.

Auteur
Marina Warner is a prize-winning writer of fiction, criticism, and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of female myths and symbols.

Texte du rabat

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. In Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, acclaimed novelist and critic Marina Warner explores the metaphorical power of metamorphoses in the
evocation of human personality. 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. Beautifully illustrated and elegantly written, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds is sure to appeal to all readers interested
in mythology, art, and literature.

Résumé
Myths and tales of metamorphosis, from Leda and the swan to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, command great excitement and pleasure among readers. This book explores stories of transformation, in poetry, fiction, and painting. It shows how ideas about human personality, such as the zombie and the doppelganger, develop in the encounter between cultures.

Contenu
Preface; 1. Mutating; 2. Hatching; 3. Splitting; 4. Doubling; Endnotes; Index