Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds by Marina Warner

Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds by Marina Warner

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 evocation 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 Hieronymus 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.

.. 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 ... Strongly recommended. Virginia Quarterly Review Arcane information for its own sake isn't Warner's game, nor is art-historical sleuthing, though both contribute to the fine-grained pleasures of this book. James Lasdun, London Review of Books A sprightly, imaginative, playful, fabulously informed public meditation on change, mutating, hatching, splitting, doubling and carrying on. New York Times The book will allow the slower reader more time to digest that range (dazzling), as well as the piercing, playful use of ideas ... (the book) is in love with complicated but deeply suggestive and often beautiful ideas that have flowered violently in the last 100 years. New York Times Book Review ... an erudite work of cultural history that generously acknowledges debts to a vast community of scholars Times Higher Education Supplement 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. New York Times Warner is a modern Renaissance woman, at ease in a multi-disciplinary world of art, literature, and science. Independent Magazine Warner's method of invoking these myths is deft and dextrous. Independent Magazine In this zest for the random fruit of research, Renaissance syncretism, nurturing new variants of ancient tales, produced a delicious, organised chaos. This is close to the yolky, juicy, sappy and fructifying cornucopia on which Warner feats her readers. Independent Magazine Her supple, humorous and warm style wears its scholarship lightly. Independent Magazine The continued power of ancient mythology to shape art and writing is illuminated with all [Warner's] usual postmodern pyrotechnical brilliance. Donald Lee, Art Newspaper Marina Warner's greatest talent is perhaps her ability to spot cultural preoccupations long before they become part of the zeitgeist. Amanda Craig, The Times Warner's gift is for inspired juxapostition. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds is less an argument than a magic lantern show that takes us from Caribbean creation myths all the way to the personal demons of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. David Jays, Observer Who but Warner could have written with such elegance and brilliance on our continuing need for fairytales. Amanda Craig, The Times

Warner, Marina: - Dame Marina Warner is a celebrated writer and critic. In 2017 she was elected President of the Royal Society of Literature in the United Kingdom, and was Chair of the judges of the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 2012, as well as the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2013.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780198187264
ISBN 10	0198187262
Titel	Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds
Autor	Marina Warner
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Oxford University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2003-01-01
Seitenanzahl	284
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar