The Butterfly Who Dreamt He Was a Man: Metamorphoses, Entomological and Human
Autor Boria Saxen Limba Engleză Hardback – 6 mai 2026
From ancient fables to modern science, insects and their metamorphoses have long inspired human understanding of life’s transitions. This original and engaging book traces how these transformations have shaped rituals around birth, marriage, and death, while also provoking deep questions about identity. Through stories that connect Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream to figures like Kafka, Merian, and Dürer, it explores the strange, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling ways cultures have understood insects—as miracles, messengers, or monsters. Blending humor, history, and environmental insight, Boria Sax offers an imaginative lens on the growing crisis of insect extinction. More than just a natural history, this is a cultural and philosophical journey that shows why losing insects means losing part of ourselves.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781836391654
ISBN-10: 183639165X
Pagini: 280
Ilustrații: 13 color plates, 28 halftones
Dimensiuni: 138 x 216 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: REAKTION BOOKS
Colecția Reaktion Books
ISBN-10: 183639165X
Pagini: 280
Ilustrații: 13 color plates, 28 halftones
Dimensiuni: 138 x 216 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: REAKTION BOOKS
Colecția Reaktion Books
Notă biografică
Boria Sax teaches at Sing Sing Prison and online in the graduate literature program at Mercy University. He has published many books, which have won awards and been translated into numerous languages. His most recent is Enchanted Forests: The Poetic Construction of a World before Time, also published by Reaktion Books.
Recenzii
“The Butterfly Who Dreamt He Was a Man takes us on a delightful journey of metamorphoses through a wide range of insect bodies as well as thought systems. Richly illustrated with stories from across time and space, the book shows how insects have been fundamental to the literary imagination. It also reveals some of the surprising ways in which human identities have been created through comparisons made between humans and insects. This beautifully written and deeply thought-provoking book transforms the way we see insects—and ourselves.”
"Sax’s gentle, attentive prose is informed as much by philosophy as cultural history. His latest book takes the reader flying and fluttering through a realm of thought in which apparently fixed categories of form—such as human and insect—dissolve and rearrange themselves in a kind of eternally active interplay suggestive of what we might call, not merely 'metamorphosis,' but the process of cosmic being itself. Clarifying, provocative, and inherently pleasurable, this is an exemplary contribution to contemporary animal studies sure to inspire scholars and general readers for years to come."
"Sax’s The Butterfly Who Dreamt He Was a Man brilliantly weaves together all the threads that tie us to the natural world. He finds literary and literal connections that will make you rethink our relationship to insects throughout history, their magnificence and the vital role they continue to play, keeping our planet on its axis."
"A mesmerizing philosophical tour of insects, humans, and transformation."