1st Edition

Transformative Change in Western Thought A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood

By Ingo Gildenhard Copyright 2013
    540 Pages
    by Routledge

    540 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book focuses on how metamorphosis figures in three formative configurations in the Western tradition: the classical, the biblical, and the scientific. It brings the history of transformative change from the eighteenth century to the present.

    General Introduction: Metamorphosis: A Phenomenology Antiquity and Archetypes: Introduction to Part I 1. The Transformations of Ovid's Medea (Metamorphoses vii. 1-424) 2. Lynx-stone and Coral: 'Liquid Rocks' between Natural History and Myths of Transformation 3. Proteus and Protean Epic: From Homer to Nonnos 4. Arboreal Myths: Dryadic Transformations, Children's Literature, and Fantastic Trees Christianity and Classicizing: Introduction to Part II 5. Of Donkeys and D(a)emons: Metamorphosis and the Literary Imagination from Apuleius to Augustine 6. Adonis as Citrus Tree: Humanist Transformations of an Ancient Myth 7. Defacing God's Work: Metamorphosis and the 'Mimicall Asse' in the Age of Shakespeare 8. Phantastica Mutatio: Johann Weyer's Critique of the Imagination as a Principle of Natural Metamorphosis Science: From the 'Post-Metamorphic' to the Posthuman: Introduction to Part III 9. Our Mind Is the Ancient Proteus': Proust, the Poets, and the Sea 10. Horror in a Covered Platter': H. P. Lovecraft and the Transformation of Petronius 11. Transforming the Experience of War in the Fiction of Marcel Aymé, René Barjavel and Michel Tournier 12. The Parabola Paradox: Transformation and Science Fiction 13. Epilogue

    Biography

    Ingo Gildenhard