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Book synopsis

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.

Book details

Book category Books in English Humanities History History: earliest times to present day

• Full title: Metamorphosis and Identity
• Author: Caroline Walker Bynum
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• EAN: 9781890951238
• ISBN: 1890951234
• ID: 05014162
• Publisher: Zone Books
• Weight: 462 g
• Dimensions: 229 × 153 × 24 mm
• Date of publishing: 10. April 2005

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