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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/6/00 3:35:57 pm)
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Transformation
Hmmmm, I read others' interests in starting this in a new topic, so thought I'd get it going.
General topics:
Fairy tales, folklore, mythology, etc. as tales of life's transformational stages.
Props as symbols of transformation.
General themes found in such literature.
Format of tale lending to sense of transformation (ex. epic poem vs prose vs ballad)
Grieving process used in tales of transformation (ex Kubler-Ross)
Character traits most often overcome
Stock characters used in tales of transformation
Ok, so these are very general and not well thought out, but I thought
I'd give maybe a few sparks. Let them live or die.
Edited by: Kerrie at: 11/7/00
8:47:59 am
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Terri
Registered User
(11/7/00 1:26:45 am)
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Re: Transformation
Transformations...my favorite fairy tale subject! Thanks for starting this topic. I'll be back with some thoughts in the next day or two, when I'm over the hump of the current deadline. Till then I'm just lurking....
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/7/00 7:12:04 am)
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Movement
Okay, I have a question/proposition.
It is I think a general principle of fiction that the central character must change. They must move from where they were at the beginning of the tale. Sometimes that's a huge leap, other times it's a subtle epiphany (a la Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" where the character is himself unaware that he's changed).
Is the transformation motif of the fairy tale then a metaphor-made-tanglible? That is, the character may not be seen to change per se, but the emblems surrounding the character have, thus cluing the reader on perhaps a subliminal hind-brain level to the transformation.
GF
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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/7/00 9:12:45 am)
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Re: Movement
Hmmm, good question. I think that what your saying is very certainly true.
I know I bring it up a lot, but for INTO THE WOODS, that is what Sondheim picked up on. The journey through the woods. EVERYONE in the cast comes out of the woods differently than when they entered- including characters you wouldn't have considered to be transformed- the stepsisters go into the woods blindly to find their prince then end up truly blind; the witch is returned to her true form, but loses her daughter and her magical powers; the Narrator is dragged into the story and killed. Except in his version of the collective tales, their attitudes towards life and circumstance change as well as their surroundings.
In the tales themselves, there are variants as to the mode of the journey- walking down a path, into a dense forest, being carried upon a boat, teleportation via a wish, climbing a mountain or beanstalk, entering an underground realm. The surroundings may say something about the characters' psyches that needs to be overcome, perhaps. Often the path is used in tales where choices need to be made, goals sought. The woods where one needs to become lost to find the true goal, or conquering fear of the unknown. Climbing, perhaps, is for those who need to reach higher, go beyond their limits and find their worth. Being transported by wishing perhaps for those who need to believe in something, in themselves, looking within. Traveling to faraway lands by boat may be about leaving what we feel is safe and discovering new possibilities, new abailities. Entering the underworld, again, perhaps about looking within and seeing the truth of what is there inside.
Not sure if this is exactly what you were talking about. Does any
of this make sense? I feel a little lost in the woods myself.
| DonnaQ
Unregistered User
(11/7/00 12:30:54 pm)
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Movement and transformation
Into the forest... (or - some ramblings from a new girl here)
At the conference in Omega, we touched upon the notion of symbol as a bridge to the Otherworld. The forest, I think, is one of those bridges that leads to a Place (an other-world) where transformation occurs. It seems that the more fanciful (though not to imply the less real or meaningful) magical places from the oral culture (under a hill, for instance) got transported to more tangible areas with the growth of the manuscript culture - with forests being among the most popular. Chretian's "Yvain" comes immediately to mind, though there are many examples of such use. For the reader, the forest has become a recognized place that is ripe with possibilities, a safe (because it is vicarious) trip to a mysterious, frought-with-danger space from which one can not help but emerge from unchanged.
I guess I see popular motifs (forests, the apple, glass)as vehicles for change - for the tale's character - and as signifiers for the reader. The motifs, unlike the characteres in the story, aren't always changed, though (especially in contempotrary retellings, I'd venture) they become "transformed" to evoke a specific, usually new connotation. I'm thinking, here, of such things as Emma Donoghue's "Tale of the Apple" where the stepmother says, "I keep breaking mirrors" or Yolen's delightful twist of the apple motif in "Snow in Summer."
In the end, I think that fairy tales, themselves, have become something of a paradigmatic entrance to an Otherworld - a place of change, growth and magic. That's probably why I like them.
| DonnaQ
Unregistered User
(11/7/00 12:32:28 pm)
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Movement and transformation
Into the forest... (or - some ramblings from a new girl here)
At the conference in Omega, we touched upon the notion of symbol as a bridge to the Otherworld. The forest, I think, is one of those bridges that leads to a Place (an other-world)where transformation occurs. It seems that the more fanciful (though not to imply the less real or meaningful)magical places from the oral culture (under a hill, for instance) got transported to more tangible areas with the growth of the manuscript culture - with forests being among the most popular. Chretian's "Yvain" comes immediately to mind, though there are many examples of such use. For the reader, the forest has become a recognized place that is ripe with possibilities, a safe (because it is vicarious) trip to a mysterious, frought-with-danger space from which one can not help but emerge from unchanged.
I guess I see popular motifs (forests, the apple, glass)as vehicles for change - for the tale's character - and as signifiers for the reader. The motifs, unlike the characteres in the story, aren't always changed, though (especailly in contempotrary retellings, I'd venture) they become "transformed" to evoke a specific, usually new connotation. I'm thinking, here, of such things as Emma Donoghue's "Tale of the Apple" where the stepmother says, "I keep breaking mirrors" or Yolen's delightful twist of the apple motif in "Snow in Summer."
In the end, I think that fairy tales, themselves, have become something of a paradigmatic entrance to an Otherworld - a place of change, growth and magic. That's probably why I like them.
| Heidi
Unregistered User
(11/7/00 2:03:11 pm)
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Positives and negatives
Transformations are always intriguing and something I have been considering personally as I have moved into a new world in the past few months--my surroundings have been transformed and parts of me with them.
But my primary thought for this post is about the transformations in Beauty and the Beast. Having read Block's "Beast" in her "Rose and the Beast," McKinley's "Rose Daughter," and even Carter's variations on the theme, many modern authors seem to regret the Beast's story-ending transformation into a man in the original tale.
Are the transformations in fairy tales always the best or fair or just or "right?" Even Tanith Lee addresses this in a round-about way by making the "Beast" character a beautiful alien that humans cannot stand to behold. Perceptions through the eye of the beholder becomes a theme with many nuances in these modern versions.
I am not sure where I am going with this since I am stealing time at lunch with all of the requisite distractions. Just wanted to get some thoughts down while they were in vitro.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/8/00 10:37:48 am)
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Beast
Heidi,
I'm just now embarking upon reading Donna Jo Napoli's BEAST, and will be curious to see how it goes relative to what you've said.
I do know from speaking with her that she started with the Beast's identity as Charles Lamb revealed it.
When you ask if the transformations are always "best, fair, just or 'right'", my take is that they are not. Sometimes they are cruel, or never undone. I'm thinking of the mother in "The Juniper Tree" who, as Margaret Atwood pointed out in an essay, is not transformed back into herself at the end of the story. She remains a tree.
GF
| Heidi
Unregistered User
(11/8/00 11:55:31 am)
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Beast, Napoli, Transformation
Greg,
I'll refrain from commenting on Napoli until you have read it. I haven't talked about it because I know most people on the board haven't read it yet. I'll start another discussion just on the book, too.
I do find it interesting that there is the need for the beast not to change now, that somehow he is more appealing as a beast than as a man. Even Mercedes Lackey's "The Fire Rose" fails to have the beast fully transformed back to human at the end. It certainly is a trend the more I think about it.
Any opinions anyone on why the beast is more appealing than the man? There are definitely feminist influences involved. Sounds like another Wiscon topic!
Heidi
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/8/00 4:02:52 pm)
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engagement
Heidi,
I think the beast is more compeling sometimes than the man in the B&B narratives because with the beast, we know we are in the presence of the fantastic, at that liminal border where anything can happen. (also the Beast is elegant, a fantastic bridegroom with wealth, culture, mystery) When he is returned (reborn, reinitiated) back into full humanity, we sense the loss of connection to the fantastic, (even with all its ambiguities) in exchange for a return to complete humanity. Something of that exquisite terror of being in the dangerous but impossible presence of the fantastic is gone and I think we grieve it--believing that we are only too familiar with the rest of the human narrative part of the tale.
But then there are beastly transformations we are glad to see end in humanity. I am thinking of a Kordofan narrative (in Froboeius's Erotic African Nights) in which a young prince through a series of events winds up married to a female girda (a type of monkey). What is reiterated over and over is how unhappy, how unproductive such a marriage is. The monkey of course possesses a secret; like the tattercoat, inside the body of the monkey is a beautiful bride. When the prince makes possible her remergence, we don't miss the beastly form at all. Though, I realize now, that she remains fantastic even in her human form and as a divine bride she makes incredible things happen for the hero--so perhaps we are happier to see the fantastic rendered in a form that is humanly beautiful, productive and accessible. Marriage in this story will unite the two possibilities--whereas in B&B, the couple lose the agency of the fantastic once the transformation has occured. It will be a marriage between two human beings.
Which raises another interesting question--the divine bride is an important female character in hero narratives--she is in her person the connection to the fantastic, and when the hero marries her he provides a bridge between the human community he serves (as a new King, or in the Monkey Girl, Emir) and the world of the fantastic with all its creative potential. But in transformations where young heroines marry men who have suffered spells of transformation, do we experience the same female agency operating on the fantastic? Or are the men capable of bringing into their relationship, after their transformation a similiar state of marriage to the fantastic?( say in Tamlin, East of the Sun/West of the Moon,...) Here it seems as if the heroine, though human, continues to exercise a creative function like the Divine bride, requiring the fantastic to shift its negative influence and perform creatively, returning, giving up and sort of rebirthing the spelled bridegroom.
I'm not sure what I am posing here...just an observation I guess. Wondering if questions of gender play roles in the mechanics of the transformation? Do the female characters act on the force of the fantastic (either as agents of the fantastic or humans engaged with the fantastic) in ways that are gendered differently than their male counterparts? When the men are spelled into beasts, it is the creative actions of the heroines wrestling with the fantastic that returns a very human bridegroom to humanity. But when the bride herself is transformed, though the hero engages with the fantastic to bring back a recognizable human bride, I don't think she ever loses her connection (or her latent power)to the fantastic world. There is also a suggestion, that the Prince or King, has married up, despite the status of his bride, because of her continued itimacy with the fantastic which she nevers seems to surrender.
| Heidi
Unregistered User
(11/8/00 4:49:23 pm)
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Beasts and Frogs
Wonderful thoughts, Midori!
As I was reading your comments, I started to also think about the related tale of the Frog Prince (King, whatever). Although these are similar stories as to transformations of the bridegroom, the frog is never really seen as romantic or desirable until he is transformed into the prince. However, I remember being disappointed as a child that the heroine gets a prince to marry after being so terrible and selfish. Beauty is her polar opposite in many ways.
Can some of the desire for the "beast" be part of his animalistic representation? The frog is not appealing but the mammalistic animal is more physically appealing, more sexual? Nevermind the various representations of the beast in illustratio alone (lion, warthog, bear, etc.)--but usually he is represented by a carnivorous,threatening animal--not something green and slimy.
I love the thought of the bride keeping her fantastic qualities while the bridegroom doesn't. Reminds me of the "lost the magic" or "once he was my husband, he didn't try to be Prince Charming anymore" comments I have heard from friends. Not that men don't say the same thing about their wives!
Lots of thoughts running around here...
Heidi
| karen
Unregistered User
(11/8/00 5:13:41 pm)
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man beasts
Maybe the beast is safer in a sense- because the animal bride groom is so wholly divorced from the "real", the story itself becomes a space in which fantasies usually deemed inappropriate are not only sanctioned, but fecund- endlessly productive, while, paradoxically, not infringing too greatly upon the more traditional modes of (re)production. A storyteller and her/his audience can play with a secure alibi, each participant secretly knowing just how fabricated and suspect that alibi really is. IT would be another kettle of fish entirely if the bride groom was human! Perhaps, in this sense, the tales become a space for a fantasy which is better dreamed about than realised.
Random crash of thoughts,
Karen.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/9/00 6:35:09 am)
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Taming the beast?
So, then, the beast represents the animal--the carnal--side of the groom (and therefore presumably the sexual side), and the transformed, human groom has been "tamed" by the bride? This alone may explain the attraction to the beast. The smoldering, sexual being brimming with passion is going to be much more romantically attractive than his human counterpart.
The beast, I'm thinking, is still there, but only on the interior. The inner and outer selves have inverted. The bride has the power to keep the beast contained, the keep her partner under control.
I'm just riffing here, so please do deconstruct, but I sure am seeing an interesting twist on Jekyll and Hyde developing out of this. Puts _Mary Reilly (sp)_ to shame.
GF
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/9/00 7:38:54 am)
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binaries
Greg,
I don't mean to suggest that the transformed male figures are divided into an animalistic and sexualized self (the "other") which is then tamed by the heroine. (Lord knows it's tempting!) Especially since it's only after the return of the transformed character (whether male or female) that sex can happen--unless of course we consider Carter--but there, the woman transformed into the tiger suggesting again that we still need creatures of a similiar morphology inorder for sex to be possible. And regardless of which in the odd couple transforms, the narrative still presents a unified couple in its conclusions.
I think the transformations are moments in the dialectical shift from one identity to another--if we are talking about human beings, then it would be the shift from adolescent (unmarried, unfulfilled adult state) into adulthood (along with the socially expected responsibilites, such as marriage). So the transformed state is a concrete image that suggests the abstract moment of the death of one identity and the moment before the new identity had emerged. When the transformation back into full humanity occurs it is usually the mutual result of a couple's actions--in the Monkey Girl, the Emir's son is also struggling to change, to grow up and emerge as the man his father wants him to be. The Monkey Girl is the negation of the girl and through the challenges that the Emir's son and the Monkey Girl face together (which simultaneously tests and changes both of them), they succeed in remerging individually and together, as an adult couple. In Tamlin for instance (or B&B), the man's transformation is a lost state--the negation of the adult man. It requires the agency of a woman--engaged herself in constructing her own adult role to facilitate the completed transformation back into an adult human. But what's cool, I think, is that the female heroines are surrounded by images of fertile power (that is in a sense their gift to the community in marraige)--so even as they are emerging as adults, the act of rebirthing their husbands from lost states into productive ones, seems to underscore that dynamic aspect of their adult life (not to mention make it fantastic). It's not about "taming" men's beastial natures--but about releasing the productive possiblities of the newly made adult couple.
I am talking about these narratives in their more traditional interpretations--which is why Carter et al is so interesting because they read against this grain--often substituting the fertility of marriage for the creative (almost Dionysiac--and certainly fantastic) impulse of sexuality. The merging of the woman into the tiger is about releasing fantastic, sexual potential in that transformation. (o.k. I've been reading a lot of Blake lately, so Tygers are much on my mind...as is sex.)
midori
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CoryEllen
Registered User
(11/9/00 11:54:47 am)
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Sex Changes
Thinking about Midori's question of whether the mechanics of transformation are gendered; Does it seem to anyone else that men in tales have more agency in their ORIGINAL transformation (man to beast) than women? Men are cursed and transformed because they did something to deserve it (were rude to the old woman by the roadside, drank from the stream in the wood), whereas women are cursed by vague "jealous" fairies or witches, or they suffer for the sins of their parents, or you really never know why they were transformed at all.
(Except in sister tales, maybe, where it's an oppositional setup - good sister follows rules, gains reward; bad sister tries to imitate but breaks rules, is transformed/cursed.)
I don't think this always holds true, but I do feel there is some sort of pattern here. Of course, the anthropologist in me wants to delve into the specific cultural contexts of these tales (gender roles, gendered taboos, etc) before generalizing. But hey.
Too many tangents, too little time.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/9/00 12:31:04 pm)
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The appeal of Beasts
Midori,
I guess I'm trying more to respond to the question of what about the beast is more appealing, not necessarily what the deeper or emblematic meaning of the tale might be--maybe that's two separate things, I don't know.
When I was working on a show about werewolves for Discovery Network, I read a lot of case notes on lycanthropy--which is the psychological disorder where one thinks they turn into an animal, and not necessarily a wolf as the name implies. It's a disorder that the American Psychiatric Association struck off the books in the late 60s, saying that there were no longer any cases of it. They were, of course, dead wrong.
The case records from the 70s and 80s were filled mostly with werewolves and large cats. Only a very few people thought they were hamsters (but there were some). One of the most famous cases in the journals is of a very unhappy woman in the midwest. As she moved into lycanthropic territory, she saw her face turn into a wolf's in the mirror as she brushed her hair; she displayed herself to husband and family nude and on all fours, and tried to get him to couple with her, in all respects having transformed as she saw it. The beast transformation for her seems to have been an expression of sexuality, an explosion of repressed desires and urges through psychosis.
So I guess I approach that question of what's attractive about beasts from that frame--the beast side is unrestrained, even distilled sexuality, and that seems to me its appeal--it's the dark side that's free to act, to express, to savor. Polite society would not allow such libidinous expression. That's why I throw the "taming" element in there, I suppose, when the beast re-emerges as a man.
Footnote: the most curious thing about the lycanthropy diagnosis was when I put the question to the interviewed doctor as to why we still turn into wolves, since we no longer live in their vicinity. He had no explanation and thought that was one of the more intriguing aspects of the condition.
GF
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/9/00 12:42:10 pm)
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agency
CoryEllen,
I'm not sure that the men have more agency in their transformations...I am running through the list of tales I know and it seems there is no one gender specific pattern, except that the transformation has occured. In some narratives we don't know what happened to cause the transformation--in The Monkey Girl, the young man's brothers fling their spear at the doorway of the woman they wish to marry. The young man, restless flings his spear into the desert. Wehn he goes after, he discovers it has landed at the base of a lone tree, and the monkey says to him, "I accept." We never know how she has come to be there, in that state. Tamelin is transformed by the Elvin Queen because the queen desires him. (I think he has made himself vulnerable by sleeping in the open or next to water?--but he hasn't antagonized her and caused the curse.). In a number of South African tales a young woman is married to man she never meets, and only discovers rather late in the dark that he is a huge snake (again, the orgin of this shape is never explained--the details of his transformation back into a handsome man are more important). In another South African tale a hero is escaping with his magic bride--but her father transforms the young man into an Eland. Not until they have arrived home is the bride able to work her magic on him and end the transformation, bringing back the hero. Whatelse? Tattercoats, Furball, Sapsorrow, Donkeyskin represent transformations that have a great deal of agency on the part of the character because they are disguises, put on and taken off at the will of the wearer (though they serve a repressive function too because for protection and survival the woman must transform herself into something opposite from what she is).
midori
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Terri
Registered User
(11/10/00 1:26:39 am)
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Re: agency
Midori, I'm glad you've brought up Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride," with it's fascinating and curiously satisying inversion of the usual ending of the story as the heroine joins her husband by transforming to the animal state herself. Dissatisfaction with the beast's final transformation into a man goes back at least to Victorian retellings. (Can anyone think of earlier versions that emphasize this aspect?) I'm thinking here of the version (for adults) by the French playwright Fernand Noziere, 1909. It's a humorous but also sensual reworking of the story with an Oriental flavor (now we get back to the Victorians and Orientalism!) -- and in this version, all three sisters are attracted to the Beast. When he's finally transformed back into a man, under Beauty's kiss, she cries: "You should have warned me! Here I was smitten by an exceptional being, an all of a sudden my fiance becomes an ordinary, distinguished young man!"
Personally, I've always been fond of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon variant of this theme, wherein the wedding takes place before the Beast/Bear's final transformation. It's sexier. Even though he's a man in her bed at night, he's still got the Beast in him at that point; it hasn't been erased or magicked out of him. I think the key here is the fact that the Beast/Bear is a gentleman...at least where Beauty is concerned. That is a prime female fantasy: the bad boy who is gentle only with you. If the Beast were truly repulsive, abusive, terrifying in behaviour as well as looks, he wouldn't be so appealling. But this vibrant animal presence (surely a metaphor for vibrant sexual presence if I ever saw one) is tamed in Beauty's company. Cocteau portrays this so well in his film, when the Beast is at Beauty's door, trying to contain his blood lust (or is it simply lust?) for her sake. This is a theme that has smouldered in too many fictional relationships to begin to count, from Rochester and Jane Eyre, to Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And despite having had enough relationships with Bad Boys in my time (including, ouch, recently) to know that this kind of relationship is rarely so satisfying in real life, fictionally it it still pushes the right buttons. Older versions of the tale, like the Noziere play in 1909, make it clear that this is not just a modern notion....
On the theme of transformation, animal transformation of all sorts are particularly interesting to me (as my paintings make all too clear....) The Deer Woman and Elk Man tales are pertinent here, particularly when we're talkin about the compelling sexuality of such creatures. Heidi, have we lost Carolyn? All this is right up her alley.
This leads me to think of the transformation of man-to-deer in Brother and Sister. And woman-to-deer in The White Deer. In neither case is there a sexual subtext (at least not to my reading), and in both stories, the transformation back to human form is both satisfying and healing.
Midori, I can think of one magical bridegroom tale, which comes from Tibet. It's a frog prince story, in which a shy young bride discovers her husband is actually a frog. (A reversal of most frog prince tales, in which the frog is actually a man.) As in selchie legends, the wife burns her husband's frog skin to keep him at her side -- and he's such a kind, gentlemanly creature that he resigns himself to remaining in human shape with good grace.
Greg, werehampsters??????? Are you making this up???? <g>
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/10/00 5:58:47 am)
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Therehamsters...there castle
Terri,
No, I'm not making it up. While there were lots of wolves, of tigers and lions and cats, a couple of dogs distinct from wolves, the case study listed one gerbil and one hamster, leading to the possible interpretation that not while some have wild animal sides, others want to be meek and tiny and cared for--there's something sort of weirdly infantile about wanting to be a hamster. Or maybe they just liked running on the wheel--I don't know.
GF
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/10/00 6:46:53 am)
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we're wolves
Greg,
I did some reading on Lyncathropy myself a few years back and was fascinated by it. It was interesting because of the variety of pyschological impulses that motivated the patients to seek animal transformations. Hampsters? Ah well, why not...maybe its infantile, but strangely pleasurable I think, to spend the day in a bed of piled woodchips and cotton batting, rousing just long enough to have a little snack...though you're right that the wheel would be a nightmare!
Terri,
I agree with you about the wide range of sexual and non sexual transformations of humans into animals (and animal into human--e.g. Tanuki, Tengu) in the tales. Apuleius' "Golden Ass" the transformation decentralizes and depoliticizes the main character which then allows him to "see" what his own arrogance has blinded him to in his society. Shapeshifters who can move back and forth from one state to another give us the ambiguious face of the fantastic to do what is necessary to drive the narrative, the images of the brother-fawn give us moments of vulnerability as well as transformation...All these different events of transformation add incredible depth to the workings of the narratives. Transformations in the form of disguise and deception allow a single character to do double and triple duty in the condensed world of the narrative. The stage is pretty small in the tale, and these transformations allow a multiplicity of possiblities to exist at the same time, giving the narratives a rich subtext while maintaining a managable surface narrative. Just think of the wonderful complicating factors for the audience to juggle (not to mention the tension!)--the transformed individual, (two competing possiblities/identities in one body), the way that contradiction imposes on the actions of the other characters (whether a bride, a questing hero, a philandering husband, a sibling, the child of murdered parent) and its amazing how easily the narratives become complicated and layered by all the masks on the stage.
Karen--my apologies for not replying to your very thoughtful post awhile back...I am still working on a reply!
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/10/00 12:33:27 pm)
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The Beast Inside
The subject title above is also the title of a book by Joyce Salisbury, a professor of history at the U of Wisconsin. It was one of my source books for the werewolf show and I can't recommend it enough. She traces the relationship between humans and animals from Late Roman through the Middle Ages. Wolves are just one element of the mix. She studies animals as property, as food, as human exemplars. The latter is particularly interesting: early Christian literature works very hard to define the differences between humans and animals. It's critical to these authors to show the beast as all the things that are bad in humans--especially, of course, all things carnal, lustful, sexual. (It was a small thing to couple with an animal, however. Penitentials list punishment for bestiality as the same as "by one's own hand"--30-40 days penance. Sodomy by comparison was good for 7-10 years penance.
Paralleling this and ultimately not so much overcoming as absorbing the Church views, are the fables where animals have human traits and become our guides to metaphysical truths, entering the medieval European consciousness, according to Salisbury, through bestiaries, sometimes as separate tales following the entries. By then the dogma that the union of humans and animals could not bear fruit had fallen to the notion that it could, and must result in monstrosities (which brings up another great book if you're interested: The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, b John Block Friedman).
One of the things Dr. Salisbury notes (just to pull this back to the topic at hand) is that the church did not declare until 1215 that the Eucharist was really and truly transformed into the body of Christ. And writings from Gerald of Wales and others support that a shift in view toward magical transformation had occurred: Where earlier pagan tales of shape-shifting have the exterior animal form change to express some inner animal state, the Christian writings going forward have exterior form altered while the inner essence remains essentially human, which is consistent with the patristic notion that the human element cannot be transformed. The beast isn't really a beast on the inside at all, a well-established fact long before Beauty plucks a rose.
A good example is one of Gerald's stories describing a couple cursed to become wolves every seven years. The husband approached the priest to beg for last rites for his wife, who was still in animal form. The man peeled back her wolfskin and the priest saw that she was indeed a woman and gave her communion. Under the skin she is still human.
GF
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