Customer Reviews

Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Clarendon Lectures in English)

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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.

Marina Warner is an amazing scholar and teacher. In this book, she begins with the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and continues with other changes in the human spirit, in both literary and natural history. The chapter on zombies is particularly relevant to her novel Indigo; the explication of the Greek psyche is familiar ground, but well done. The only flaw in this brilliant work is the continual return to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights as an allegory of life. Her enthusiasm for the painting does not match her vast knowledge of classical and popular literature. However, I recommend this book highly as a helpful tool to any student of the humanities.