The Serpent and the Swan is a history and analysis of animal bride tales from antiquity to the present. The animal bride tale, the author argues, is an enduring expression of humankind's need to remain close to and a part of nature.
Boria Sax traces the idea of the animal bride through history by drawing upon legends and literary works from throughout the world. He pays particular attention to Eurasian sources which support his thesis that the animal bride theme originated among the serpent cults of Mesopotamia and southeastern Europe. Through time, the details of the animal bride theme changed as a result of mankind's changing perceptions of the natural world. In general, this study is an account of myths and beliefs that have surrounded animals -- and women -- during the rise of modern humankind.
The Serpent and the Swan identifies and explains images of the animal bride that pervade, enliven, and enrich our culture. The bride becomes Eve taking an apple from the serpent, Medea casting spells, Cinderella riding to the royal ball in a pumpkin coach, and the Little Mermaid rising from the waves.
...highly recommended to all who wish to probe human-animal relationships at their deep symbolic levels. -- Anthrozoos, vol. 12, #2 (1999)
From the Publisher
(Prepublication endorsement by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas) Obviously a triumph of scholarship, this work is as compelling as it is interesting, particularly because it is so well written. A comprehensive account of Animal Bride stories from all over the world, many of them painful and many of them sad but all of them intriguing, the book reminds us of an unnatural division that often brings about considerable suffering, unmitigated by the fact that the division is remarkably similar to that which we place between men and women. Even more compelling, at least to my way of thinking, is that these stories seem endemic to our species, and crop up in an amazing array of really very similar folktales indifferent and culturally unrelated parts of the world.
Our stories begin long before we are born, and contain more than we can ever know. I have told the story of my early years in the book Stealing Fire: A Boyhood in the Shadow of Atomic Espionage, which will be published by Ad Infinitum Books in 2009. But when I look back, I find myself asking, "Was that really me?" If the reader hears my voice in these printed words, it is for her to say.
I first became interested in the literature of animals around the end of the 1980's, not terribly long after I had obtained my Ph.D. in German and intellectual history. I was feeling frustrated in my search for an academic job and even study of literature. By accident, I came across an encyclopedia of animals that had been written in the early nineteenth century. There, without any self-consciousness, was a new world of romance and adventure, filled with turkeys that spoke Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. Within a few months, I had junked my previous research and devoted my studies to these texts.
Today, I shudder how nervy the switch was for a destitute young scholar, who, despite one book and several articles, had not managed to obtain any steady job except mopping floors. But soon I had managed to publish two books on animals in literature, The Frog King (1990) and The Parliament of Animals (1992). Around 1995, I founded Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS, Inc.), an organization that combines storytelling and scholarship. It was initially, a sort of rag-tag band of intellectual adventurers who loved literature but could not find a niche in the scholarly world. We put together a few conferences, which generated a lot of excitement among the few who attended, but little notice in academia or in what they sometimes call "the real world."
From fables and anecdotes, I moved to mythology, and published The Serpent and the Swan (1997), a study of animal bride tales from around the world. This was followed by many further publications including an examination of the darker side of animal studies, Animals in the Third Reich (2000), and a sort of compendium, The Mythical Zoo (2002), and a cultural history of corvids entitled Crow (2003). At the moment I am finishing up a history of the famous ravens in the Tower of London.
When I embarked on the study of animals in myth and literature, even graduate students did not have to mention a few dozen books just to show that they had read them. In barely more than a couple decades, the literature on human-animal relations has grown enormously in both quantity and sophistication. NILAS, I am proud to say, has become a well established organization, which has sponsored two highly successful conferences together with ISAZ.
But as the study of animals, what I like to call "totemic literature," becomes more of a standard feature of academic programs, I fear that something may be lost. It is now just a little too easy to discourse about the "social construction" and the "transgression" of "boundaries" between animals and human beings. Even as I admire the subtlety of such analysis, I sometimes find myself thinking, "So what?" Having been there close to the beginning, part of my role is now to preserve some the sensuous immediacy, with that filled the study of animals in literature when it was still a novelty. That sort of "poetry" is not simply a luxury in our intellectual pursuits. With such developments as cloning, genetic engineering, and the massive destruction of natural habitats, we face crises so unprecedented that traditional philosophies, from utilitarianism to deep ecology, can offer us precious little guidance. The possibilities are so overwhelming, that we hardly even know what questions to ask. But neither, I am sure, did the fugitive who once encountered a mermaid in the middle of the woods.
For the last seven years or so, I have made my living mostly in online learning, where I deal directly with the technologies that are transforming our lives. It is also the vortex of countless stories that are exchanged over the internet, in the form of rumors, gossip, urban legends, tall tales, and perhaps even the beginning of a new mythology. I have sat in solitude before the computer screen, as the alchemists of old did before their tubes and vessels. I have found solace in novel forms of community, at the disembodied voices of friends appeared with messages, which has now almost ceased to appear strange.
This review is from: The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature (Paperback)
From the title you might expect something esoteric, but actually it fits right into the mainstream of human history. Author Boria Sax asks at the outset a series of direct and disarming questions: What is nature? What is animal? What is human? What is gender? What is marriage? He devotes a brief discussion to each. The picture that emerges is that mankind in the course of its development separated itself conceptually from nature, but ever after felt the need to return. Yet the concept of "nature" is not fixed; it changes with society and remains largely a mystery, as do the animals within it. One way of re-establishing the connection is through imagination, storytelling, mythmaking. Add the reminder that humans and animals can form a bond as close as a marriage, that a man may call his sweetheart his pet, and you have the psychological preconditions for the story of the animal marriage.
There are animal brides and animal grooms, and they figure not only in remote legends and tales, but in literature central to the birth of our civilization. Such are Gilgamesh and Enkidu; Adam, Eve and the Serpent; and the accounts of animal worship or reverence that punctuate the narratives of the Old and New Testaments. Such outbreaks of zoolatry, which continue on through the Middle Ages and up to the weird cults of our time, Sax interprets as revolts against the anthropomorphic gods that replaced the original animal ones. He shows how many peoples traced their origins back to animals, how noble families liked to claim a romantic link to mythical beasts. He touches on the fears animals awaken in humans, such as lawlessness, sensuality, incest, and also on their magical powers, released in ceremonies such as snake-handling.
Coming to his chief subject, Sax explores the protean power of the the serpent and the swan, the one shedding its skin and achieving rebirth, the other moulting, swimming and taking wing, both sinuous and mysterious. The crucial story here is Melusine, which I should not retell in a review, save to say that in it the two creatures become as one. It's a tale that runs through many cultures and can even be seen in our recurrent films about mermaids. Sax believes that it can reinspire us and lead us back to a sacrimental observance of animal rights. The book has wonderful line illustrations, taken from sources ancient and rare, and retellings of the chief legends. For anyone who responds to Joseph Campbell, and for those yet to explore the meaning of myth, this book will be a delight.
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This review is from: The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and Literature (Paperback)
I actually took Dr. Sax's class this summer and we used his book in addition to others. One thing in his favor was that his book was priced similar to most other textbooks. Some professors have you buy their books that are too expensive.
As for the book, it goes nicely into different animal-human relationships in literature. He deals with a variety of creatures such as selkies, serpents, cats, etc. He also references a number of stories and goes into depth explaining the animal-human relationship, such as "The Little Mermaid." A very good book and written well to keep the reader's attention. The best sectin was the very beginning where he describes his interation with some swans. It covers both fantasy and reality in a very humerous manner.
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