Critical Insights: Going Into the Woods

Woods and forests have long been seen as places of both beauty and danger, of both charm and threat. Dark woods, in particular, have often been treated as symbols of vulnerability, especially when they are imagined as inhabited by wild animals so that they become literal wildernesses—wild places—in which people can easily lose their way and face general insecurity and specific forms of menace. This volume, then, explores the theme of going into the woods by interpreting the topic broadly and sometimes metaphorically.