Transformation as the Principle of Literary Creation From the Homeric Epic to the Joycean Novel

This study opens with an extensive introductory essay focused on the concept that there is no story without some kind of transformation. It ranges over centuries and across literatures in order to document clearly and concisely how this omnipresent feature of narrative actually works. Various aspects of transformation are investigated and elaborated, including problems of ontology and teleology, progression and regression, discovery and recovery, physical and psychological change, literal and figural formulations, truth and lie, physics and metaphysics. Eight principal chapters are devoted to classic works: the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Decameron, Canterbury Tales, Tom Jones, Jacques the Fatalist, Anna Karenina, and Ulysses. A centrally situated essay treating Don Quixote links the first four chapters with the second four. Profound shifts, changes, and reversals of plot find their place here in a wide-ranging discussion aimed also to evoke a focused sense and reminiscence of selected masterworks of world literature.