Comparing Ovid's Metamorphoses To Marie De France

In many of the stories and poems that contain some form of physical transformation, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Marie de France’s Bisclavret, power and voice, as a form of articulate language used to express complex ideas, have been intricately linked and they themselves are usually connected to community and one’s status in the community. In most of the stories previously studied, a loss of voice resulted in a lack of recognition and led to a loss of power and freedom. As such, one would think that the opposite would be true too, and that by gaining a voice, gaining language and the power to communicate complex thoughts would result in a gain of power. This is not the case in the Island of Doctor Moreau, where although language, power and
As such, contrary to the way things might first appear in the novel, and contrary to our previous reading, it is the gain of a voice, as a way of expressing complex ideas, that result in the beast-people losing their power and freedom and results in them being controlled by the other members of the island community. Among the Beast-Folk, the better they are with language and communication, the more human they appear and behave, the more easily they are controlled.
In many of Ovid’s stories and in Bisclavret, the transformation that resulted in the loss of communication due to a lack a voice resulted in a loss of power for the transformed. We see this in many tales, although the form of transformation and the result varies from case to case. In Acteon and Callisto’s case, their transformation into an animal led to their inability to disclose their identity. Acteon’s to his court and Callisto’s to her son and in both cases, would result in their deaths. In Daphne’s case, she was unable to communicate her lack of consent to Apollo who then proceeded to make her his symbol, by adopting her laurels as his head piece. She could no longer resist him or communicate her