Thesis: "Hybridity and Metamorphosis"

Let me know if my thesis does stand out and if it's strong. I've been reading over and over, and now i'm starting to doubt it. Thanks for your critiques!

In 13th century Metamorphosis and Identity, Caroline Bynum explores anxieties about the idea of hybridity and metamorphosis in the conversion of personal, subject and spatiotemporal identity. Hybridity is that an individual can be 2 competing identities, co-existing in 2 different worlds, and the individual who transforms into another individual, performs metamorphosis. Both of these ideas go against the natural order when it defies what God had intended. The 16th century nonfictional story of Arnaud du Tilh, also known as Pansette, in The Return of Martin Guerre employs the ideas of hybridity and metamorphosis in its focus on the positive concept of Early Modern self fashioning. Arnaud du Tilh constructs his new identity through hybridity and metamorphosis, his self fashioning became virtuous when he entered the role as a husband, based on Perkin's Christian Economy, to Bertrande de Rols filling a vacancy which Martin Guerre abandoned. Arnaud was fraudulent when he stole Martin's identity out of self intent, but through his metamorphosis into a better Martin Guerre reflects a moral, religious and personal conversion which places him in society with in the divine order.

Hi Byron


I'm lost, three words- anxieties, hybridity, and spatiotemporal. not sure how to make sense of them together I guess. what are anxieties? doubts? and by explore, I'm assuming she thoroughly discusses the topic. that makes sense. and what do you mean by conversion of... as in changes in? Is 'hybridity' something that Ms. Bynum uses?


Ok, so this makes it clearer; yet the sentence structure needs fixing.
Individuals display "hybridity" with their dual, antagonistic identities that coexist within two different worlds (does the person or does the identity co-exist in two worlds?), and individuals who transform (what do you mean? that his/her character changes/) from one to the other undergo? metamorphosis. I'm not sure if this is clearer or just bs...From what I understand, that's a somewhat better statement.


Is this according to Bynum?


So Arnaud is the character, but if you don't use Pansette (the aka?) don't use it here. You plop A LOT of the plot here. Who wrote this story? author/writer? And I'm not quite sure what Early Modern self fashioning is here. What do you mean? what IS self fashioning? also, you use those two terms a bit too much?-hybridity/metamorph.

Er...Reading through the rest, there's a lot of plot? I'm not sure what the prompt was, but most likely focus more just on the necessary parts in the intro, defining the terms you used, and talking more about the character later.

gtg :<
Good luck~

Thanks for the critiques, as you can see my essay construction sucks; but I'm working on it. Yah, I know that i'm using the terms hybridity, identity, fashioning way too much. It was just that my professor required me to use the terms, so I "slightly" went overboard.

What I was trying to imply in the intro was that hybridity is a stage, and when an individual transforms permanently he/she moves on to the 2nd stage, metamorphosis. Than if the actions of the character are virtuous than self fashioning has been performed. I know these 3 terms are complex, but it was worth a shot trying to tie them together.

I'll have to do a bit more pre-writing to come up with a clearer thesis, I may just have to abandon "self fashioning" altogether.

Hi again,
so if you didn't entirely toss out "self fashioning" just yet, you can still save it. I get it better now that you've added that note. make it clearer then that these are stages that a person undergoes. I guess a better phrase for self fashioning is self-improvement? try to make that clear too~ I don't think it should be self fashioning is performed, but self improvement has been achieved*

note* than is mainly used for comparison. you should have used then*