Metamorphosis and Identity. (Reviews).

Metamorphosis and Identity. By Caroline Walker Bynum (New York: Zone Books, 2001. x plus 270pp. $28.00).

Postmodernism focuses on shifting and fluctuating boundaries and categories, on deconstruction of texts and constructs, and on varying perceptions, especially from subalterns and those on the margins. While all these can offer marvelous perspectives, they are also tremendously unsettling, especially because they all beg the question: what are things--or what and when are they not and who decides this? All of which implies the question: what is change? Just as we are fascinated and troubled with these issues and wrestle with them intellectually, socially, and personally so too did medieval people. This is the point of Caroline Walker Bynum's collection of exploratory articles, here gathered loosely under the rubric of metamorphosis and identity--or change and construct, if you will. Wisely and cleverly she highlights a particular case study, which like a microhistory says so much about other things. Gerald of Wales (1146-1223) included an account of a werewolf in his The History and Topography of Ireland What did this creature represent--a change (metamorphosis) or some combination (hybrid)? And how to explain it--where did it come from or how did it come about? By the twelfth century, intellectuals--but also average people--began to look more broadly at things in the world and began to wonder and be amazed. The world represented more than they had previously thought or categorized. What is and what is not? Are there things in between? Can things move between the two poles, and how do they do so? And some important things, on further examination, now began to look unsettling and confusing, heresy for one, the Eucharist for another.

Bynum is quick to point out that this collection is only the tip of the iceberg, for many thought about the problem of change in the High Middle Ages; moreover, she is quick to note how provisional her findings are, based as they are on just a couple of sample cases or sample authors. But these are rich, and leave us with more questions than answers, which is good as we begin to wonder and be amazed. If the examples she provides us with regarding wonder in the Middle Ages and what made for wonder, regarding metamorphosis or what made for change in the Middle Ages, regarding hybrids or what made for combined forms in the Middle Ages, or regarding shape or what made for structure and the narrative of it in the Middle Ages are any indication, we medievalists will be wrestling with these debates and views many years into the future.

The High Middle Ages was awash in wonders, and the intellectual fervor and ferment of the Twelfth Century Renaissance made this possible. Bynum highlights three sources for this wonderment: philosophical speculation; theological writings; and travel narratives and other entertaining literature. Wonder here was paradoxical; for it implied something beyond explanation at the moment yet also something that could be explained given enough time and talent. This concept, of course, harkens back to Aristotle and St. Augustine, who had pointed out that things that are unclear to the ignorant become clarified to the informed. Thus wonder is the first and requisite step to knowledge. The werewolf stories that became a stock in trade for medieval travel narratives exemplify this paradox. While holding out the horrifying possibility of species change, the stories also implied a very fertile natural world where all sorts of things and processes were possible and that even with this apparent confusion there was the possibi lity of finding the deeper order to this apparent chaos. But there was always something frightful about this particular type of story--it left the reader questioning what the body was and wondering could it change and how. And these accounts opened up other troubling questions that left medieval theologians wondering: what was the Eucharist then, a metamorphosis or a miracle or just a revelation of what had already been there?

Although metamorphosis was one possibility of change, some resisted this concept and argued for the occurrence of hybrids--no real change occurred, just a combination of forms. In essence these thinkers argued for a world less in flux than those who argued for the possibility of metamorphosis. Of all things, Bynum discovers that discussion of hybrids occupied pride of place in the thought of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. What was a monster? For him a combination of two, not a shifting between, which also then was unnatural in most cases, unless God had ordained this hybrid, such as the order of fighting monks. In fact, Bynum is quick and right to note that Bernard's own life reflected this monstrosity. On the one hand, monks were dead to the world; but, on the other, they were forced by society to play roles in that society. Bernard lived as a monk; but he acted publicly for all sorts of worldly endeavors (the Second Crusade for instance). This role confusion led him to wonder about how well he--or any other mons ter--could play either side. Christian life was a hybrid split between the active and the contemplative; humans were hybrids split between flesh and spirit--even Christ was a hybrid, a double hybrid (human and then man/God). Bernard wrestled well and hard with this issue, and argued that even though a hybrid, humans' flesh and spirit both were drawn towards God, becoming then a likeness with him. Here for him is an example where even a hybrid could change--albeit at the point of salvation.

Lastly Bynum looks again at werewolf stories (she even notes a renaissance of werewolf tales in the twelfth century) and finds why they were of particular interest and particularly troubling. In Ovid's classical tale of a werewolf, a particularly oppressive fellow becomes a wolf. But in Marie de France's medieval tale the werewolf becomes human. Here, the narrators of these tales in the Middle Ages--and especially theologians--had to avoid any hint of metempsychosis (perhaps why Bernard and others clung so hard to hybridity). Thus their emphasis on metamorphosis as the agent of change. But it was also clear to the narrators (and readers and listeners) that tales were not allegories-they were real. And there were other real issues that were always in the background of the werewolf discussion and could not be dismissed as allegories--such as the issue of transubstantiation and the concept of Christian magic and miracles as a whole.

Thus, difficult as it was for them, high medieval theologians and authors had to confront the question of change and debate it. All this led to a very fertile and active open dialectic on this topic and implied all sorts of new ways to view the world. By the fourteenth century, however, perhaps because this openness was troubling and believed to have prompted the expansion of heresy, this debate began to be closed off; one way this occurred is that theologians began to argue that shape-shifting and werewolf stories were allegorical.