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Beastly Blake pp 153–181Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Bestial Metamorphoses: Blake’s Variations on Transhuman Change in Dante’s Hell

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature ((PSAAL))

Abstract

This chapter explores Blake’s response to scenes of bestial metamorphosis in Dante’s Inferno. Through the reversible transformation of thieves into serpents, Dante presents classical metamorphosis as a transgression of the boundaries of species. In bringing Dante’s inventions to the eye of the Romantic reader, Blake turns to classical sculpture as a repository for demonic embodiments. The theme of transformation becomes the medium for a response to the alterity of form. The concept of pseudomorphosis or ‘formal disintegration’, which was developed by the iconographical school to capture the productive misreadings of classical artistic forms in medieval culture, drives the analysis of Blake’s bestial metamorphoses as an experiment in the possibilities and limits of form through a series of transgressions of boundaries between languages, genres, and media.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Luisa Calè

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  1. Luisa Calè
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Correspondence to Luisa Calè .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Amateur, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Helen P. Bruder

  2. Department of English, St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Tristanne Connolly

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Calè, L. (2018). Bestial Metamorphoses: Blake’s Variations on Transhuman Change in Dante’s Hell. In: Bruder, H., Connolly, T. (eds) Beastly Blake. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89788-2_7

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