The Poetics of Transubstantiation : From Theology to Metaphor

This title is an investigation into the concept of transubstantiation, using an approach which covers theoretical and philosophical treatments, questions of its ethical, political and aesthetic significance into the 20th century, and its use as a metaphor in the production and understanding of culture.

The essays in this collection explore the concept of ''transubstantiation'', its adaptations and transformations in English and European culture from the Elizabethans to the twentieth century. Favoring an interartistic and comparative perspective, a wide range of critical approaches, from the philosophical to the semiological, from cultural materialism to gender and queer studies, are brought to bear on authors ranging from Descartes, Shakespeare and Joyce, to Macpherson, Madox Ford, and Winterson, as well as on contemporary sculpture and an Italian adaptation of Conrad for the screen in an unusually comic vein. The volume, edited by Douglas Burnham of Staffordshire University and by Enrico Giaccherini of Pisa University, will be of interest to those concerned with the cultural history of Christianity and with the remarkable critical and theoretical insights generated by contemporary approaches to this traditional theme.