Transformative Change in Western Thought
eBook - ePub

Transformative Change in Western Thought

A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood

  1. 520 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Transformative Change in Western Thought

A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

This groundbreaking volume maps the shifting place and function of marvelous transformations from antiquity to the present day. Shape-shifting, taking animal bodies, miracles, transubstantiation, alchemy, and mutation recur and echo throughout ancient and modern writing and thinking and continue in science fiction today as tales of gene-splicing and hybridisation. The idea of metamorphosis lies in uneasy coexistence with orderly world views and it is often cast out, or attributed to enemies. Augustine and the church fathers consider shape-shifting ungodly; Enlightenment thinkers suppress alchemy as unscientific; genetically-modified wheat and stem-cell research are stigmatised as unnatural. Yet the very possibility of radical transformation inspires hope just as it frightens. A provocative, theorising, trans-historical history, this book ranges across classics, literature, history, philosophy, theology and anthropology. From Homer and Ovid to Proust and H. P. Lovecraft and through figures from Proteus to Kafka's Fly and toSpiderman, four historical surveys are combined with nine case studies to show the malleable, yet persistent, presence of transformation throughout Western cultural history.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351538718
Edition
1
Topic
Languages & Linguistics
Subtopic
Languages
Index
Languages & Linguistics

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgements
  6. Preface
  7. List of Contributors
  8. List of Illustrations
  9. General Introduction: Metamorphosis — A Phenomenology
  10. PART I: ANTIQUITY AND ARCHETYPES
  11. PART II: CHRISTIANITY AND CLASSICIZING
  12. PART III SCIENCE: FROM THE ‘POST-METAMORPHIC’ TO THE POSTHUMAN
  13. Epilogue
  14. Bibliography: Primary Sources
  15. Bibliography: Secondary Literature
  16. Index I: Names, Concepts and Themes
  17. Index II: Authors, Artists, Directors and their Works