Metamorphosis and Identity (review)

In Metamorphosis and Identity, Caroline Walker Bynum presents four studies that complement her past research on twelfth- and thirteenth-century attitudes toward the self, corporality, and change. Of those four chapters, three have already been published: "Wonder" (American Historical Review, 1997), "Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the Werewolf" (Speculum, 1998), and "Shape and Story" (1999 Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities website). Bynum notes "substantial" revisions to "Metamorphosis" and "Shape and Story." The fourth chapter, here placed as chapter 3, "Monsters, Medians, and Marvelous Mixtures: Hybrids in the Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux," further develops suggestions made in the three earlier essays about the relationship between hybridity and metamorphosis in the Middle Ages.

Uniting Bynum's collection is her conviction that the debates over change and mixture (metamorphosis and hybridity) that she analyzes illuminate fundamental medieval ontological concerns. These worries are admirably summarized in her introduction, where she explores the various ways in which the processes and existence of change influenced many levels of medieval thought. Incorporating materials as diverse as Walter of Châtillon's satires, Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons, and Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Maius, the four succeeding chapters develop aspects of this thought and suggest how medieval attitudes toward change reveal attitudes toward self. For example, Bynum concludes her chapter on Bernard of Clairvaux by stressing that, for Bernard, humanity is essentially a hybrid, facing constant intellectual and social tensions based on the dichotomies, contradictions, and oppositions of humanity itself and humanity's environments. If Bernard's spirituality is seen as a metamorphosis, as some scholars have suggested, Bynum stresses that metamorphosis in that case must mean a return to something, rather than change from something. Alteration/replacement would undermine the unitas which, for Bernard, must be at the heart of the human bond with God (pp. 160-162).

Given the chapters' diverse origins, it should not be surprising that this book's richness is in its details. Bynum explores language, such as the various meanings of monstrum and varietas, in order to highlight the almost symbiotic relationship between ontology and etymology found in medieval understanding of metamorphosis. Moreover, Bynum excels at the seemingly simple statement or brief aside, which, when reconsidered later, offers intriguing insights both to her theme and to broader historical concerns. For example, in her introduction she devotes two paragraphs to a shift between the mid- and late-twelfth-century conceptions of change (pp. 24-26). Although she only sketches this "new model" of change, it has profound implications for both eucharistic theology and medieval science. Equally suggestive is her distinction between hybridity/mixture and metamorphosis/change and her critique of motivations and methods underlying some recent historical research on medieval marvels. Her footnotes are particularly rich, and their detailed historiographical discussions add enormously to each article.

Despite this book's many strengths, it will disappoint those readers who expect to find between its pages Bynum's last word on medieval concepts of change and identity. Certainly readers will benefit from the information it contains, but perhaps more valuable is the light this books sheds on the methodology and means of communication used by a leading medievalist grappling with questions she believes central to medieval thought.