Writing Metamorphosis in the English Renaissance (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107041653)

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.

Author: Susan Wiseman
ISBN-10: 1107041651
ISBN-13: 9781107041653
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/16/2014
Pages: 254
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2015 pg. 805