Visual figuration and the otherworld

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract / Description of output

The basic idea of a female spirit atached to a place of water has endured for millennia in literature, folklore and the visual arts. Supernatural aqua3c women– mermaids, sirens, nymphs and nereids, of sea, shore, spring, river and cave –exist at the interface between the natural world and the otherworld; they are also markers for that boundary. They are visualised as manifes3ng in a remarkable variety of forms, from ideal female nudes to monstrous hybrids.
Central also to the mythos of the water-woman is the transformative power of desire; experienced by, or exerted on, either the entity herself or her beholder. Focussing on traditions involving the Homeric sirens and the aqua3c transformations described in Ovid, with excursions into Cel3c, Northern European and folkloric sources, I explore the related issues of hybridity and desire in treatments of the water-woman from Classical an3quity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 5 Apr 2024
EventTraditional Cosmology Society 40th Anniversary Conference: As Above, So Below: : Explorations in Myth and Ritual Throughout the World - University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Duration: 5 Apr 20249 Apr 2024

Conference

ConferenceTraditional Cosmology Society 40th Anniversary Conference
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityEdinburgh
Period5/04/249/04/24

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