Metamorphosis And Identity

by Bynum, Caroline Walker

• ISBN13: 9781890951238
• ISBN10: 1890951234
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-01
• Publisher: Zone Books

Summary

The four studies in this book center on the Western obsession with the nature of personal identity. Focusing on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but with an eye toward antiquity and the present, Caroline Walker Bynum explores the themes of metamorphosis and hybridity in genres ranging from poetry, folktales, and miracle collections to scholastic theology, devotional treatises, and works of natural philosophy. She argues that the obsession with boundary-crossing and otherness was an effort to delineate nature's regularities and to establish a strong sense of personal identity, extending even beyond the grave. She examines historical figures such as Marie de France, Gerald of Wales, Bernard Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, as well as modern fabulists such as Angela Carter, as examples of solutions to the perennial question of how the individual can both change and remain constant. Addressing the fundamental question for historians -- that of change -- Bynum also explores the nature of history writing itself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	11	(4)
Introduction: Change in the Middle Ages	15	(22)
The Ulster Werewolves	15	(4)
Change: The Concept	19	(3)
Change and the Twelfth Century	22	(6)
Hybrid and Metamorphosis	28	(5)
Some Methodological Considerations	33	(4)
I Wonder	37	(40)
Recent Scholarship on Wonder and Wonders	40	(2)
The Many Wonder Discourses of the Middle Ages	42	(6)
Theological and Philosophical Discussion	48	(3)
Admiratio in Devotional Literature	51	(2)
The Marvelous in Literature of Entertainment	53	(3)
The Range of Wonder Responses	56	(13)
Wonder and Significance	69	(3)
Wonder as Cognitive, Perspectival, and Non-appropriative	72	(1)
Wonder and the Modern Historian	73	(4)
II Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the Werewolf	77	(36)
Again the Question of Bodily Change	79	(7)
Ovidian Poetry as Fascination with Change	86	(3)
Theological Speculation on Growth and Change	89	(3)
Werewolf Stories as Testing of Boundaries	92	(6)
The Ovid Reception as Enthusiasm for Order	98	(3)
Learned Theology and Miracle Stories as Ontological Control	101	(4)
Were Medieval Werewolves Really Metempsychosis?	105	(4)
Conclusion	109	(4)
III Monsters, Mediane, and Marvelous Mixtures: Hybrids in the Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux	113	(50)
Mixture and Monster	117	(10)
Similitude and Doubleness	127	(4)
Change and Unitas	131	(13)
Natural Philosophy as the Context of Bernard's Understanding	144	(3)
Twelfth-Century Religious Life as Context	147	(3)
Literature and Art as Context	150	(8)
Conclusion: Hybridity in the Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux	158	(5)
IV Shape and Story	163	(28)
The Problem of Personal Identity	163	(3)
Some Stories About Werewolves: Ovid's Lycaon	166	(4)
Some Stories About Werewolves: Marie de France's Bisclavret	170	(3)
Stories About Werewolves and Metamorphosis: Angela Carter	173	(3)
Metamorphosis and Identity	176	(4)
Shape and Story, Body and Narrative	180	(2)
Metamorphosis in Dante	182	(5)
Conclusion	187	(4)
Afterword	191	(4)
Notes	195	(80)
Photo Credits	275	(2)
Index	277