Transformations I
Lycaon's transformation into this animal is an example of a character becoming a creature that reflects who they are on the inside.
What is a wolf?
This flower derives its name from the transformation of Clytie, who was so desperately in love with the sun god Helios that she would watch his path across the sky every day.
What is a heliotrope?
Who is Ariadne?
Literally from the Greek for "self" and "earth," this term describes a people who consider themselves indigenous to a place, rather than transplants, having "sprung from the land itself"; Thebes and Athens are examples of this.
What is autochthonous?
What is A Midsummer Night's Dream?
This son of Apollo died painfully after attempting to drive his father's sun-chariot across the sky.
Who is Phaethon?
This hunter was transformed into a deer after happening upon the goddess Diana while bathing, and was then subsequently ripped to shreds by his own hounds.
Who is Actaeon?
Who is Hecate?
Also called the monomyth, describes the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
What is the "Hero's Journey"?
In Dante's Inferno, where plenty of characters from Greek mythology are turned into demons (including Midas, Cerberus, et al.), Dante himself is led through hell by this famous epic author.
Who is Vergil?
This subject of transformation-by-an-angry-Diana is also the mythic origin of the catasterism that is Ursa Major and Minor.
Who is Callisto?
Unlucky King Midas not only suffered from the "curse" that was the "Golden Touch," but was also turned (partially) into this animal.
What is a donkey/are donkey ears?
This king of Iolchus who sent Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece, was eventually killed by his own daughters, after they had been tricked by Medea into thinking they could make him young again.
Who is King Pelias?
As opposed to Euhemerism, which is an approach to myth that attempts to rationalize the fantastical, this approach looks at myth as metaphor or symbolism.
What is allegory?
Coined by Sigmund Freud, this psychological "condition" takes its name from the Theban king who famously killed his father and married his mother.
What is the Oedipus complex?
Aside from the tragedy that Romeo and Juliet takes its inspiration from, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe also describes this aetiological transformation.
What are mulberries/is how mulberries got their color?
Mercury placed this transformation upon Aglauros, because she refused to move to let him see her sister, Herse.
What is turning to stone/to a statue?
Rama and Sita both possess this trait, an individual's duty fulfilled by observance of custom or law, which is an ideal in Hinduism.
What is dharma?
This term describes when an author uses detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device; for example, the description of the embroidery on the bridal couch written about in Catullus 46, the Epyllion.
What is ecphrasis/ekphrasis?
Author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book which discusses the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Who is Joseph Campbell?
After surviving the flood, or Deluge, that wipes out the rest of humanity, Deucalion and Pyrrha do this in order to repopulate the earth.
What is tossing stones over their shoulders?
After showing the gods xenia, and becoming priests at their temple-home, elderly couple Baucis and Philemon are transformed into these upon their (simultaneous) deaths.
What are intertwining trees?
This leader of the Rakshasas in the Ramayana is recognizable within iconography because he has 10 heads.
Who is Ravana?
At the end of his Metamorphoses, Ovid claims that Julius Caesar became this astrological phenomenon after his murder.
What is the Sidus Iulium (Caesar's comet)?
Theory popularized by Carl Jung, which describes the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual's unconscious-- this is also tied to archetypes.
What is the collective unconciousness?