Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Metamorphosis is the keynote of this book. Originally published 1992 it is a gathering together of stories about statues that come to li I have tried to make sense of why such stories grip us as fantasies an as forms of knowledge as ways of seeing the world and other peopl as well as things made of stone. It is the threshold moments of transfor mation that I have attended to most closely here taking stock of thein varied occasions the different shapes of life that emerge weighing what is lost and gained there what is hidden or made clear. One recur- ring theme is that the fantasy of the animated statue emerges as a re sponse to a life lived among frozen images. Statues come to life in a world where thoughts and words bodies and gestures always threaten to turn into statues where living things become rigid opaque and silent. Such stoniness has its attractions. It is a fate we may desire as much as fear. If the idea of a statue’s movement seeks to counter the deathly fixity of statues that fantasy may also reflect our sense of a vitality and a power latent in their very lack of ordinary life. That paradox suggests why in so many of the texts examined here. the story of a statue’s coming to life is knitted together with a story about living persons who turn into statues. (LL)