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Jun. 8th, 2022 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeletsIt looks like there are two different types of human-animal transmutations in fairy tales: enabling and constraining. The first enables a human-animal hybrid to obtain the powers of both, e.g. a werewolf is clever like a man and is powerful like a wolf. Most of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian chimeras(gods) are of that type too. They are specifically designed to be masters of multiple realms.
The constraining type puts a human into an animal body or vice versa. Probably the best modern example would be Kafka's Gregor Samsa from the Metamorphosis. The Thousand Nights and a Night are full of these too. And so are Russian folk tales.
The constraining type puts a human into an animal body or vice versa. Probably the best modern example would be Kafka's Gregor Samsa from the Metamorphosis. The Thousand Nights and a Night are full of these too. And so are Russian folk tales.
When it was the Nine Hundred and Eighty-fifth Night,
...
'To content thee, I will not kill them, but I will enchant them.' So saying, she brought out a cup and filling it with sea-water, pronounced over it words that might not be understood; then saying, 'Quit this human shape for the shape of a dog;' she sprinkled them with the water, and immediately they were transmuted into dogs, as thou seest them, O Vicar of Allah."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3443/3443-h/3443-h.htm#chap29
