Transforming tales : rewriting metamorphosis in medieval French literature / Miranda Griffin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Griffin, Miranda.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--To 1500--History and criticism.

French literature.

Metamorphosis in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 270 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Literary depictions and reworkings of transformation raise questions about medieval understandings of the differences between human and animal, man and woman, divinity and humanity, life and death. Transforming Tales argues that the study of transformation is crucial for understanding a wide range of medieval French literary works. From the lais and Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, through the Roman de la Rose and its widespread influence, to the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé and the prose cycles of the late Middle Ages, metamorphosis is a recurrent theme, resulting in some of the best-known and most powerful literature of the era. Transforming Tales is the first book in English to explore in detail the importance of ideas of metamorphosis in French literature from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. In this book, Miranda Griffin traces a series of figures (the werewolf, the snake-woman, the nymph, the magician, amongst others) as they are transformed within individual texts; she also examines the way in which figures of transformation themselves become reworked during the course of the Middle Ages. Griffin's approach combines close readings and comparisons of literary texts with readings informed by modern critical theories to give an account not just of texts which deal with metamorphosis, but also of the way in which the stories they tell are themselves transformed. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Dismembering Ovid 31

2 Reflecting on Echo 68

3 The Beast Without 102

4 Sex and the Serpent 137

5 Now You See Him...: The Metamorphoses of Merlin 176.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199686988

019968698X

OCLC:

907661209