Metamorphosis and Identity

The wisest bit of contemporary criticism, aside from Harold Bloom, I've read in a long while:

[I] resist drawing analogies between past and present until each is put in its own context. Just as current notions of change must be understood in their full social, philosophical, and semantic range before they are helpful as tools, so medieval understandings of mutatio should be explored across and among medieval discourses before comparisons are drawn to modern problems. It is unwise, for example, to relate Gerald's [of Wales] bearded lady to modern circuses or modern theories of gender-bending before we look, first, at the stories and concepts among which Gerald embeds his account and, second, at how words such as "monster" or "marvel" or even "beard" occur in other types of literature and discourse communities in Gerald's own day.

Caroline Walker Bynum, "Introduction" Metamorphosis and Identity.