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Metamorphosis, or the self’s radical transformation, is the subject of one of Ovid’s most famous poems, of numerous folk tales (werewolves, especially), and thus of many medieval literary works. People turning into animals or trees and vice versa figure the relations between colonisers and colonised, ‘civilised’ and ‘savage’, in Europe’s marginal areas. They may also stand for the terrible deformations that sin performs on the sinner; or for passion’s devastating or transcendental effects on the lover. Metamorphosis tests and defines the boundaries of the Western human ‘self’ as subject and as object.Ìý

In this module we shall look at some medieval literary works that stage metamorphosis in narrative and lyric from a range of European languages, countries and traditions. We shall also investigate modern attitudes to the 'limits of the human', in particular via 'post-human' and 'post-humanist' theoretical approaches (drawing on, for example, animal studies and cyborg studies), with a view to seeing what they can bring to our study of 'pre-humanist' medieval literature - and vice versa.ÌýÌý

(Please note that the module requires a literary approach rather than a mythological one – that is, we shall be treating the literary works with an attention to their specific, verbal formulations, and not simply as instances of larger narrative types. Feel free to contact the convenor for more detail on this.)Ìý

The module will include four segments, each providing a different perspective on metamorphosis: translation, translatio and metaphor; transforming love; devilry; canines, kings and conquests. Although the list of set texts is long, all the works or extracts are short; many are available free online (and please talk to the module tutor before buying anything). Students have the opportunity to focus on particular works or themes.Ìý

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Set TextsÌý

1. Ovid, Metamorphoses (classical Latin) (extracts)Ìý
   You will need to buy a translation of Ovid. Numerous are available. The following are recommended, but are by no means the only acceptable ones:Ìý
   - Original classical Latin, ed. F. J. Miller, 3rd edn, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1989) (with academic English translation)Ìý
   -ÌýMetamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington, various editions; a readable modern translation)Ìý
   -ÌýTales from Ovid: Twenty-Four Passages from the ‘Metamorphoses’, trans. Ted Hughes (London, 2002) (poetic reworkings, a useful text to use in class; read at least this whole collection before the start of term; or you can read the whole of Ovid’s Metamorphoses if you prefer)Ìý

2. Boccaccio, Decameron, day 4, story 2; day 9, story 10. Original Italian and English translation at Decameron WebÌý

3. Dante, Inferno, XXIV-XXVÌý
   Original Italian and English translation: Dante, The Divine Comedy, I: Inferno, ed. and trans. Robin Kirkpatrick (London, 2006)Ìý

4. Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis, Girart de Barri), from Topographia Hibernica: ‘Of the prodigies of our times, and first of a wolf which conversed with a priest’ (Distinction 2, Chapter XIX).
   Original medieval Latin can be downloaded free from Gallica (pp. 101-107 of book, pages 212/572-218/572 of download)Ìý
   English translation: The Topography of Ireland, trans. Thomas Forester (Ontario, 2000) (pages 44/97-47/97). Available online.Ìý

5. Marie de France, ‘Bisclavret’, ‘Yonec’.Ìý
   Original Anglo-Norman in Lais, ed. Alexandre Micha (Paris, 1998)Ìý
   English translation by Judith P. Shoaf (available online).Ìý

6. Arthur and GorlagonÌý
   Original Cymro-Latin, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, ed. by George Lyman Kittredge, Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 8 (1903), pp. 149-275 (available online).Ìý
   English translation: Arthur and Gorlagon, trans. F. A. Milne, Folklore, 15 (1904), 40-67.Ìý

7. Petrarch, Canzoniere. Ìý
   Original Italian and English translation in: Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The ‘Rime sparse’ and Other Lyrics, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA, 1976).
   (This edition is for consultation in libraries rather than for purchase)Ìý

8. Sir GowtherÌý
   Original Middle English, in The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury(Kalamazoo, 1995) (available online). Modern English translation available online.Ìý

9. Le Lai de NarcisseÌý
   Original Old French and English translation in Narcisus et Dane, ed. and trans. Penny Eley (Liverpool, 2002) (available online)Ìý

10. A dossier of troubadour (medieval Occitan) and Minnesinger (Middle High German) lyrics will be provided.Ìý

11. Chrétien de Troyes (Ovide moralisé), Philomène (Old French)Ìý
    Original Old French and English translation in Three Ovidian Tales of Love, ed. and trans. Raymond Cormier (New York, 1986)Ìý

12. Gower, John, Confessio Amantis, book V, ll. 5551 -6074 (the tale of Tereus, Procne and Philomena)Ìý
    Original Middle English (and modern English gloss): ed. Russell A. Peck (Kalamazoo, 2004), vol. 3 (available online)Ìý

13. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 'Legend VII: Philomela', in The Legend of Good Women - Original Middle English and Modern English translation available online.Ìý

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Initial Secondary Bibliography: Ìý

• Badmington, Neil, ed., Posthumanism (London, 2000)Ìý

• Bloch, R. Howard, ‘Medieval Misogyny’, in Misogyny, Misandry, Misanthropy, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 1-24Ìý

• Bynum, Caroline Walker, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, 2001)Ìý

• Derrida, Jacques, The Animal That Therefore I Am, trans. David Wills (Fordham, 2008)Ìý

• Goldin, Frederick, The Mirror of Narcissus in the Courtly Love Lyric (Ithaca, NY, 1967)Ìý

• Griffin, Miranda, Transforming Tales: Rewriting Metamorphosis in Medieval French Literature (Oxford,Ìý2015)Ìý

• Kay, Sarah, Animal Skins and the Reading Self (Chicago, 2017)Ìý

• Keith, Alison, and Stephen Rupp (eds.), Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto, 2007)Ìý

• McCracken, Peggy, In the Skin of a Beast: Sovereignty and Animality in Medieval France (Chicago, 2017)Ìý

• Otten, Charlotte F., ed., A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture (Syracuse, NY, 1986)Ìý

• Salisbury, Joyce E., The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, 1994)Ìý

• Sconduto, Leslie A., Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity through theÌýRenaissance (Jefferson, 2008)Ìý

• Warner, Marina, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (Oxford, 2002)Ìý

• You may also wish to dip into two journals’ special issues on animal studies: PMLA, 124:2 (March, 2009) (not so much the ‘Victorian Cluster’!), postmedieval, 2:1 (Spring, 2011)Ìý

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Please note: This module description is accurate at the time of publication. Amendments may be made prior to the start of the academic year.Ìý