Editorial Note: Transformations

Abstract

In choosing the essays for this issue of Source, I aimed for our usual variety of medium, period, and methodology, without being conscious of an overall theme. But I notice that many of the articles in this issue revolve around the power of art to transform or provoke a metamorphosis, such as changing a novice to a knight, converting a solid building to a visionary fantasy, or promoting a usurper into a legitimate ruler. This transformative power, of course, also has its effect on the viewer, for whom a work of art, in whatever medium, may provoke a spiritual or emotional makeover. In the Broadway musical Billy Elliot, the provincial dance teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson, tells her clumsy pupils (all of them