The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was: Myths of Self-ImitationOxford University Press, 2004年11月18日 - 288 頁 Many cultures have myths about self-imitation, stories about people who pretend to be someone else pretending to be them, in effect masquerading as themselves. This great theme, in literature and in life, tells us that people put on masks to discover who they really are under the masks they usually wear, so that the mask reveals rather than conceals the self beneath the self. In this book, noted scholar of Hinduism and mythology Wendy Doniger offers a cross-cultural exploration of the theme of self-impersonation, whose widespread occurrence argues for both its literary power and its human value. The stories she considers range from ancient Indian literature through medieval European courtly literature and Shakespeare to Hollywood and Bollywood. They illuminate a basic human way of negotiating reality, illusion, identity, and authenticity, not to mention memory, amnesia, and the process of aging. Many of them involve marriage and adultery, for tales of sexual betrayal cut to the heart of the crisis of identity. These stories are extreme examples of what we common folk do, unconsciously, every day. Few of us actually put on masks that replicate our faces, but it is not uncommon for us to become travesties of ourselves, particularly as we age and change. We often slip carelessly across the permeable boundary between the un-self-conscious self-indulgence of our most idiosyncratic mannerisms and the conscious attempt to give the people who know us, personally or publicly, the version of ourselves that they expect. Myths of self-imitation open up for us the possibility of multiple selves and the infinite regress of self-discovery. Drawing on a dizzying array of tales-some fact, some fiction-The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was is a fascinating and learned trip through centuries of culture, guided by a scholar of incomparable wit and erudition. |
內容
3 | |
10 | |
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for His Wife | 28 |
The Double Amnesia of Siegfried and Brünnhilde | 40 |
Resurrection and the Comedy of Remarriage | 64 |
Amnesia and the Tragedy of Remarriage | 90 |
Reincarnation | 112 |
FaceLifts | 137 |
Mind Lifts | 163 |
Passing Race and Gender | 183 |
The Zen Diagram of the Self | 203 |
Notes | 233 |
Bibliography | 253 |
Index | 263 |
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常見字詞
actor actually adultery already amnesia appears argued asked become Bedtrick begins believe body Brünnhilde called character Charles comes daughter dead death discovered disguised Doniger double dream eyes face face-lift fall father film finally forget gender give Gunther hand happened human husband identity imitating impersonating keep killed king kiss later live look lover male marriage married mask masquerade means meet memory merely mind mirror mother mythology myths named nature never night novel once particular passing past person play plot pretending queen realized recognize remarked remember revealed Saga says self-imitation sense sexual Shiva shows Siegfried someone soul story sword tell theme things thought told true truth turn unconscious voice wearing wife woman women young
熱門章節
第 11 頁 - JACK: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
第 137 頁 - There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days...
第 217 頁 - But ... the selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own, call them what you will...
第 203 頁 - I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self, something created in a moment and perpetually renewed...
第 200 頁 - Womanliness . . . could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it-much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove that he has not the stolen goods. The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the line between genuine womanliness and the 'masquerade.
第 217 頁 - For if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not - Heaven help us - all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit?
第 213 頁 - Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial.
第 41 頁 - And a bird to the right sang Here; And the arch of the leaves was hollow, And the meaning of May was clear. I saw where the sun's hand pointed, I knew what the bird's note said; By the dawn and the dewfall anointed, You were queen by the gold on your head. As the glimpse of a burnt-out ember Recalls a regret of the sun, I remember, forget, and remember What Love saw done and undone.
第 217 頁 - ... the conscious self, which is the uppermost, and has the power to desire, wishes to be nothing but one self. This is what some people call the true self, and it is, they say, compact of all the selves we have it in us to be; commanded and locked up by the Captain self, the Key self, which amalgamates and controls them all.