- 258 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
Taking Ovid's Metamorphoses as its starting point, this book analyses fantastic creatures including werewolves, bear-children and dragons in English literature from the Reformation to the late seventeenth century. Susan Wiseman tracks the idea of transformation through classical, literary, sacred, physiological, folkloric and ethnographic texts. Under modern disciplinary protocols these areas of writing are kept apart, but this study shows that in the Renaissance they were woven together by shared resources, frames of knowledge and readers. Drawing on a rich collection of critical and historical studies and key philosophical texts including Descartes' Meditations, Wiseman outlines the importance of metamorphosis as a significant literary mode. Her examples range from canonical literature, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, to Thomas Browne on dragons, together with popular material, arguing that the seventeenth century is marked by concentration on the potential of the human, and the world, to change or be changed.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half title
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- A note on texts
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: writing metamorphosis
- Chapter One Classical transformation: turning Metamorphoses
- Chapter Two Sacred transformations: animal events
- Chapter Three Transforming nature: strange fish and monsters
- Chapter Four Metamorphosis and civility: werewolves in politics, print and parish
- Chapter Five Transformation rewritten? Extreme nurture, wild children
- Coda: Descartes and the disciplines
- Notes
- Index
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Yes, you can access Writing Metamorphosis in the English Renaissance by Susan Wiseman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.