Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Clarendon Lectures in English) 1st Edition by Marina Warner (PDF)

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. 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, thecoming 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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “[A] piercing, playful use of ideas…. Warner moves with a high-wire walker’s assurance, from Ovid, Bosch and Dante to James Hogg’s ‘Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner,’ Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and on to Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ and even Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials.’ In addition, she makes several seductive moves toward that enormous threat to intellectual history, the movies…. Especially when looking at Bosch, Warner sees something like fluency in the rampant, exhilarating way forms can find new shapes. This is Warner at her playful best.”–The New York Times Book Review”In this typically agile meditation, [Warner] rewardingly charts shifting images of the imagination itself…. What makes Fantastic Metamorphoses remarkable is its dashing investigation of imagination.”–The Observer”Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds makes a compelling case for the exploration of creation, evolution, growth, and decay. Warner not only accomplishes her goal of showing how other worlds are created in art but she indeed opens the door to those other worlds by taking readers on a journey where ghosts, mythological beings, zombies, and fairies become their faithful partners.”–Dolores Flores-Silvia, Roanoke College”Rules of thumb: (1) genuinely scholarly books are no delight to read, and (2) “antiquarian” studies do not illuminate the life and culture of (post)modern readers. Exception: Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds…. This irresistibly styled and splendidly illustrated treatment of generation, evolution, growth, and decay touches most of the mythological–and many of the literary-artistic–bases, but goes beyond them to encompass photography, cultural anthropology, folklore, and lepidoptery.”–Virginia Quarterly Review”Warner offers a perceptive analysis of the genre of fantastic art…. Makes a compelling case for the importance of exploration of creation, evolution, growth, and decay.”–Sixteenth Century Journal”The four essays in this book offer profound and probing searches into metamorphoses as the ‘principle of organic vitality as well as the pulse in the body of art’…. A rewarding venture through a revised Western history of ideas. Highly recommended.”–Choice About the Author 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.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a fascinating, truly fascinating, analysis of the metamorphic trends in literature, and how those trends are used in fiction to “tell” the self. It’s divided into four parts. The first three: Mutating, Hatching, and Splitting covered a lot of new ground for me. The fourth section: Doubling, not so much. Mutating addressed the cross-pollination of ideas between cultures. Hatching dove more into issues of identity. Splitting provided an in-depth look at how Zombies came to be. Doubling covered a lot of ground with images and photography. It was the hardest section to read, and the least interesting. I’ve always viewed transformation as a positive thing. I came away from this study with the new understanding that many cultures/religions have found transformation to be threatening.

⭐The book tackles the idea of metamorphoses as a theme in art and literature. Stirred into the mix are mythology, encounters between Europeans and tribal peoples in the New World and how those encounters affected art and literature produced in the Western tradition, meanwhile relating all these to the idea of personal identity. Among the works discussed in detail are Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apuleis’ The Golden Ass, Hieronymous Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, some Renaissance-era graphic sexual depictions of Leda and the Swan, Maria Merian’s late 17th century natural history studies of butterflies, and then onto a discussion of zombies, Coleridge, Jean Rhys, Kafka, Nabokov, photography, Lewis Carroll and more. This may all sound like heavy going, but Warner writes for the layperson, and you need not have read the primary sources to follow her reasoning. (But her discussion and excerpts made me want to check out a copy of Ovid and read it for myself!) The artwork is illustrated by plates, some in color.The book is an ambitious attempt to raise issues more than come to sweeping conclusions, with chapters titled Mutating, Hatching, Splitting, Doubling. Those interested in Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and other writers on comparative mythology should find it interesting. The chapters on Mutating and Hatching were more compelling to me as someone with a special interest in art and mythology. Fans of 19th century literature, especially Gothic literature, may prefer Splitting and Doubling. And it is blessedly free of any type of academic jargon. Indeed, Warner also conveys the sheer enjoyment of reading or looking at the material she discusses.

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