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Item Details
| Title:
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THE WOMAN WHO PRETENDED TO BE WHO SHE WAS
MYTHS OF SELF-IMITATION |
| By: |
Wendy Doniger |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| List price:
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£31.49 |
| Our price: |
£27.55 |
| Discount: |
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| You save:
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£3.94 |
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| ISBN 10: |
0195313119 |
| ISBN 13: |
9780195313116 |
| Availability: |
Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.
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| Stock: |
Currently 0 available |
| Publisher: |
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC |
| Pub. date: |
12 October, 2006 |
| Pages: |
288 |
| Description: |
Many cultures have stories about people who masquerade as themselves or, more precisely, who pretend to be other people pretending to be them. In this book, noted scholar of Hinduism and mythology Wendy Doniger offers a cross-cultural exploration of this theme. Drawing on myths, plays, novels, operas, and films, she traces the mythology of self-imitation from Ancient India to modern Hollywood. Drawing on sources as diverse as the Mahabharata, As You Like It, andTotal Recall, Doniger explores the symbolism of self-imitation, memory and amnesia, and identity. She argues for both the literary power and the human value of the mask that reveals the truth, the mask beneath the mask, the self beneath the self. The result is a fascinating and learned trip throughcenturies of culture, guided by a scholar of incomparable wit and erudition. |
| Synopsis: |
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. |
| Publication: |
US |
| Imprint: |
Oxford University Press Inc |
| Returns: |
Returnable |
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