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Book Cover
E-book
Author Wiseman, Susan

Title Writing Metamorphosis in the English Renaissance : 1550-1700 / Susan Wiseman
Published New York : Cambridge University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Machine generated contents note: Introduction: writing metamorphosis; 1. Classical transformation: turning Metamorphoses; 2. Sacred transformations: animal events; 3. Transforming nature: strange fish and monsters; 4. Metamorphosis and civility: werewolves in politics, print and parish; 5. Transformation rewritten? Extreme nurture, wild children; Coda: Descartes and the disciplines
Summary "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"-- Provided by publisher
Notes Includes index
Print version record
Subject English literature -- History and criticism.
Animals, Mythical, in literature.
Metamorphosis in literature.
Monsters in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Animals, Mythical, in literature
English literature
Metamorphosis in literature
Monsters in literature
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781107732131
1107732131
9781107300460
1107300460