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History of ideas
 9 other titles

Mythology
 8 other titles

Legenda: Oxford, 2013  
£45.00 ($89.50 US)  Hardback  538pp
ISBN: 978-1-907975-01-1

This ground-breaking volume maps the shifting place and function of transformative change in the Western imaginary from antiquity to the present day. Shape-shifting, species crossing, transubstantiation, metamorphic magic, and mutation recur and echo throughout ancient and modern writing and thinking, and have continued in science fiction as tales of a newly empowered humanity manipulating the building blocks of life.

The idea of metamorphosis lies in uneasy coexistence with orderly world-views, and it is often cast out, or attributed to delusional, mad, or demonic impulses. Shape-shifting is considered ungodly by Augustine and the church fathers. Alchemy is censured as unscientific by Enlightenment thinkers. ‘Promethean’ experiments in creating new life are condemned as unnatural and dangerous by modern critics. Yet the very possibility of radical transformation continues to inspire hope as much as fear.

A provocative, theorizing, trans-cultural history, this book ranges across classics, art history, literature, philosophy, theology and film studies. A general introduction and three historical surveys are combined with twelve case studies to show the malleable, yet persistent, presence of metamorphosis throughout Western cultural history, from Homer and Ovid to Shakespeare, Proust and H. P. Lovecraft, and through figures such as Proteus, the Golden Ass, Kafka’s insect and The Fly.

Ingo Gildenhard is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. Andrew Zissos is a Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine.