Metamorphosis in Modern German Literature: Transforming Bodies, Identities, and Affects by Tara Beaney (review)

[...]in a discursive and psychoanalytical approach, these bodily transformations can signify twentieth-century German history, and the denial of psychosexual as well as sociocultural predicaments that leave their traces on female bodies. Whereas metamorphosis as an ever-changing concept in the literary texts of the past two hundred years is very convincing, the book would have benefitted from a more extensive investigation into the history and theory of the concept of metamorphosis, as well as from a more nuanced understanding of the differences between concepts such as transformation, change, transmutation, and metamorphosis. [...]a deeper investigation of animal and species studies would have furthered an understanding of the chapters dealing with human-animal transformations, and vice versa (Hoffmann and Kafka). Furthermore, the subtitle Transforming Bodies, Identities, and Affects suggests that the book not only deals with the transformation of bodies and identities, but also affects. Since affect has been a major research topic for at least the past ten years, it could have been expected that Beaney would have explored and theorized this concept in more detail instead of applying it mostly as a descriptive category.