Reincarnation in popular culture

Reincarnation is regularly mentioned in feature films, books, and popular music. The similar concept of transmigration has been used frequently to the point of cliché in the sense of people "switching bodies," in which the identity of a character transfers to another's body, either unilaterally or by exchange (e.g. Vice Versa), or to an animal (e.g. The Once and Future King) or object (e.g. The Picture of Dorian Gray). This concept has been used many times in various films, particularly in Indian cinema and television.

Metempsychosis is the title of a work by the metaphysical poet John Donne, written in 1601. The poem, also known as the Infinitati Sacrum, consists of two parts, the "Epistle" and "The Progress of the Soule". In the first line of the latter part, Donne writes that he "sing[s] of the progresse of a deathlesse soule".

During the classical period of German literature metempsychosis attracted much attention: Goethe played with the idea, and it was taken up more seriously by Lessing, who borrowed it from Charles Bonnet, and by Herder.

Reincarnation is a key plot device in Edgar Allan Poe's 1832 short story "Metzengerstein', in his "Morella" (1835) and "The Oval Portrait" (1842).Mark Twain mentions this concept in "A Word of Explanation" at the beginning of his "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." He comes across a "curious stranger" at Warwick Castle in England who shows him ancient armor that supposedly once belonged to the knights of the Round Table. He interrupts his musings by saying: "You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?" He later claims to have killed one of the knights himself ... with a bullet!

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