This work aims to develop new readings of the poetics and the politics of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) in the light of the bodily metamorphoses represented in the fairy tales. Metamorphic processes can be said to inform the stories of the collection both in a thematic and a stylistic perspective and address the need to rethink human experience altogether, especially as regards heterosexual relationships and power distribution between the sexes. By exhibiting the body and its changes in texts where it is traditionally concealed or treated as a natural essence, Carter foregrounds the powerful potential of metamorphosis - as a concept, a topic, a structuring and guiding principle, and as a proposed model - in order to expose and challenge patriarchal myths and discourses, which slow down or even prevent the progressive empowerment of women's conditions and positions within society (in the Seventies as well as today). Carter's creativity and commitment are engaged in a productive dialogue with some contemporary feminist philosophers, to show how and why her fairy tales and their transformative potential can be - once again - signified anew.

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d'un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d'origine.

The Life of Reason, subtitled "the Phases of Human Progress", is a book published in five volumes from 1905 to 1906, by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana . It consists of Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science. The work is considered to be the most complete expression of Santayana's moral philosophy . Santayana's philosophy is strongly influenced by the materialism of Democritus and the refined ethics of Aristotle, with a special emphasis on the natural development of ideal ends. The Life of Reason is sometimes considered to be one of the most poetic and well-written works of philosophy in Western history. To supply but a single example, the oft-quoted aphorism of Santayana's, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," may be found on p. 284 of Reason in Common Sense.