Earth
Year: 2025
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This first case study of the volume concerns stories about men and women who disappear by either becoming, or being replaced by, earth materials—rocks or stones or statues. It argues that the choice of earthly materials in these stories had emotional and relational significance, and it explores the diversity of types of petrifaction and their potential meanings from two directions: first, what the evidence reveals about associations specifically with emotions that seem to inhere to particular earthly materials; second, the ways in which earthly materials appear to be used by and across different authors in the representation of emotions. It argues that the imagery of petrifaction offers a way of describing not only the emotional and physical state of an individual, but also, importantly, their relationship to the people around them—the self in society—introducing the role of pollution or miasma as a way of making sense of these stories. The final part of the chapter turns to stories of metamorphosis into trees and plants, examining how tales about men and women who become rooted in the earth reflect some similar themes. Turning to modern research on trauma responses, this leads to a consideration of the emotional significance of these stories of ‘rootedness’, one that depicts what we may now recognize as a ‘fright’ response to extreme events and emotions.
Author: Esther Eidinow
Institution: University of Bristol
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4413953767