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Reading Literary Animals
Medieval to Modern
Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan, Jane Spencer, Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan, Jane Spencer
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Reading Literary Animals
Medieval to Modern
Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan, Jane Spencer, Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan, Jane Spencer
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Reading Literary Animals explores the status and representation of animals in literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. Essays by leading scholars in the field examine various figurative, agential, imaginative, ethical, and affective aspects of literary encounters with animality, showing how practices of close reading provoke new ways of thinking about animals and the texts in which they appear. Through investigations of works by Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and Ted Hughes, among many others, Reading Literary Animals demonstrates the value of distinctively literary animal studies.
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Part I
Testing Metaphor
1 Entities in the World
Intertextuality in Medieval Bestiaries and Fables
And in the Song of Songs, âCatch us the little foxes that spoil the vineyardsâ ⊠And David in Psalm 62 said, âThey shall be prey for foxesâ ⊠Physiologus, therefore, spoke wisely of the fox.
Physiologus
Always the fox will remain the fox.
The History of Reynard the Fox
Medieval literature is not known for verisimilitude or originality. The early medieval beast book excerpted in my first epigraph presents not a depiction of foxes but biblical references to them, and that text was emulated by hundreds of others over five centuries. Fables, another important animal genre, relate and recycle stories from âRomulusâ or âAesop.â And the narratives in bestiaries and fables, usually unrealistic in themselves, are accompanied by reiterated doctrinal or moral applications to human behavior. If âintertextualityâ names the recognition that âthere is always language before and around the text,â as Roland Barthes writes (30), the animal literature of the Middle Ages is undeniably intertextual.
Indeed, its intertextuality is especially conspicuous. The intertextual connections of modern texts can be implicit and unmarked, masked by the convention of independent authorial agency. In contrast, the producers of medieval beast books defer often and openly to sources and authoritiesâparticularly to that supreme pre-text, the Christian Bible. Modern readers might be excused for thinking that such deference constitutes the textual inbreeding described by Catherine Belsey, a condition in which texts âsignify by means of their relationship to each other rather than to entities in the world ⊠reflect[ing] the order inscribed in particular discourses, not the nature of the worldâ (43).
But her advisedly polemical formulation acknowledges its complement: that readers sometimes believe that literary discourse refers beyond itself to âentities in the world.â That is especially likely when the discourse in question centers on entities âanimated (animare) by life and moved by spiritâ (Isidore 247; 12.1). In what follows, I will argue that openings to âthe world of natureâ (to invert Belseyâs phrase) complicate and even subvert the exegetical, metaphoric, and analogical conventions of medieval bestiaries and fables. As Reynard declares at the end of Caxtonâs History, accumulated refiguration does not entirely denature the fox.
Physiologus: Framing the Bestiary
Scholars agree that medieval bestiaries were produced predominantly in England, in Latin, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Beyond those matters, consensus is elusive. Counts of surviving bestiary manuscripts range from 50 to over 120 (Baxter 226; Clark 93), and estimates of the total number produced vary commensurately (Baxter 226; Buringh 504). One scholar believes bestiaries to have been âextraordinarily popularâ; another refers to âmoderate, not outstanding successâ (McCulloch 44; Clark 93). More fundamentally, commentators hold different assumptions about what counts as a bestiary (Clark 10). To permit meaningful comparison and analysis, leading bestiary scholars limit the term to those medieval beast books demonstrably related â[b]y lineage, form, text, and images ⊠to the Latin Physiologusââthat is, to a âChristian animal book ⊠written most likely in the second century at Alexandriaâ and known to the Latin West by the fourth century (Clark 104 and 8; similarly Baxter 29 and George and Yapp 5). But scholars differ about the relationships among Physiologus manuscripts and about the degree to which bestiaries reflect those manuscripts (Clark 9nn.16 and 18; George and Yapp 6). Thus it may be surprising that we continue to discuss âthe Physiologusâ and âthe bestiaryâ in the singular. Even Ron Baxter, who criticizes the notion of âa discursive unity called âThe Bestiaryââ (22), treats bestiary texts collectively more often than individually.
In defense of that practice, I submit that Physiologus manuscripts signal their collective intertextuality by retaining a uniform structure and citing a common ancestor. That is especially true of the most influential strands of Physiologus, known as the Y and B versions (Carmody, Physiologus ⊠B and âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ). Segments or âchapters,â one for each beast, consist of scriptural references, a description or natura, and Christianizing explications or moralizations. More notable is their frequent citation of a single eponymous source. Many animal descriptions relate what âPhysiologus dixit de eo (says about it),â and many chapters end with some variant of âPhysiologus, therefore, speaks well.â1 Thus the same nameââwhich might be translated as âNatural Philosopherâ or, less succinctly, âhe who speaks of natureââ (Clark 8)âdesignates both the original author and each successive recension of his work. We might imagine an endless series of self-replications.2
Of course, manuscripts are necessarily unique, and some variations in what âPhysiologus saysâ are of more than philological interest. In particular, a given animal may be rendered somewhat differently in the two main versions. The ibis is always called âunclean,â following Leviticus 11.17, but manuscripts in Physiologus B include a plausible explanation: the bird cannot swim and thus feeds on decaying backwash near the shore (Carmody, Physiologus ⊠B 27; compare Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ 114â115). Regarding another creature, the B compilers specify what has become the best known source of the sirenâs deadly power, the seductive sweetness of its song.3 For its part, Physiologus Y includes a sociological detail absent in B: it compares the duplex onocentaurus (assâcentaur, from Is. 34.14) to wicked negotiatores (merchants or bankers) (Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ 114).
Such differences appear only to readers with access to more than one Physiologus text, but they rest on a feature fundamental to all versions: inventiveness in the scriptural exegesis and moralizations. Even biblically trained readers must sometimes have been surprised at the prolific scriptural referencesâfive or six citations in the short fox chapter, for instance, and a dozen or more connections in the B version between biblical verses and the features and colors of the dove.4 Apparent to all readers would have been the ingenious analogies for animals not named in the Bible. Opening the phoenix chapter, the authors of both Physiologus versions paraphrase John 10.18: âI have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up againââa succinct prolepsis of the upcoming narrative (Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ 108). In one of several chapters devoted to stones, the scriptural connection is equally apt but initially startling. Following Pliny, Physiologus Y writes that a sindicus (Indian-stone) will absorb the âfoulnessâ from a man with dropsy and then discharge foul water several hours later. âThe stone,â the author declares, âis our lord Jesus Christ,â who descended because we were âdropsicalâ with the âdevilâs watersâ in our hearts. The author follows with âand he himself bore our infirmities,â a paraphrase of Matthew 8.17 (Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ, 122). At least for a modern reader, the number and ingenuity of such allegorizations overshadows their biblical and moral lessons.
Some scholars regard such variations as incidental to fundamental exegetical patterns. For Baxter, in particular, the sequence of Physiologus chapters suggests âa structured treatise on virtue and viceâ (xiii, 37, and 89), and within chapters, âthe first, or literal, section ⊠tends to include passages from the Old Testament while the second, or moralizing, section relies on the Newâ (Baxter 33). But there are abundant exceptions to both proposed patterns.5 Old and New Testament citations intermix even in the âliteralâ description of the lion, which opens Physiologus (Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ 103). And many Physiologus beasts might be labeled both virtuous and vicious. The unclean ibis of the B branch later merges with other winged creatures presented as exemplary because they fly by making the sign of the cross. The fox, initially identified as the Devil and Herod, is given an attribute of a natural creature: unlike Christ, it has a den (Carmody, Physiologus ⊠B 27â30; Matt. 8.20, Luke 9.58). Notably, Physiologus acknowledges such inconsistency and generalizes it. âBut perhaps you say that because the caladrius is unclean according to the law [Deut. 14.18],â writes the Y compiler,
how can it represent the person of the Savior? The serpent is unclean, yet ⊠is said to be rather wise [in John 3.14]; similarly with respect to the lion, and many others. And the creatures are twofold, praiseworthy and blameworthy.
(Carmody, âPhysiologus ⊠Yâ 106; also, Carmody, Physiologus ⊠B 16).
The inconsistency is itself significant. Variably allegorized, the ibis and fox are independent of any single textual representation but rich in interpretive potential. Collectively, the animals signify primarily that the material world holds unlimited meaning. Taking warrant from Romans 1.20ââFor the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that he has madeââearly Church Fathers including Augustine of Hippo spoke of a book of nature whose revelations parallel those of scripture (Kay 475â476). In a commentary on that verse, the twelfth-century monastic Hugh of Saint Victor outlines an âascending order of knowledge,â in which the three aspects of earthly creaturesâtheir âimmensityâ (âmultitude and magnitudeâ), their âbeautyâ (âplacement, motion, species, and quality perceived by the sensesâ), and their âusefulnessâ (âpleasing, apt, convenient, and necessaryâ)âlead upward to the âinvisible power, wisdom, and mercy (or goodness)â of God (Migne 176: 811Câ811D; Rorem 63). But then, adds Hugh, âfollowing or imitating Godâs own order of creating, âwe proceed returning [downward] first from the wisdom of God to the rational creature, then from the rational creature to the corporeal creatureââ (Migne 176: 835A; Rorem 64). Revelation arises from and returns to the singulae creaturaeâthe particular creaturesâin their multiplicity and variety (Migne 176: 814B). Physiologus leads readers on a congruent path: from the âunclean,â shallow-feeding ibis, upward to a spiritual understanding of shallowness and depth, then back to the birdâs posture in flight. It is an overdetermined bird, heavily textually mediated, but the interpretations presuppose its extratextual reality. The intertextual discourse of âPhysiologusâ is directed and shaped by reference to âentities in the world.â
Bestiary Metaphorics: Ways of Seeing the Partridge
Physiologus was expanded in overlapping stages whose relationships have been variously categorized (Baxter 25â27, 84â99, and 127â128; Clark 9â13). The âmatureâ Latin bestiaries of the twelfth century, generally classified as âSecond-family,â contain more than twice as many chapters as the longest Physiologus (Clark 9â11; McCulloch 34). The added material comes primarily from three sources with different aims and principles: largely unmoralized animal descriptions in Isidore of Sevilleâs Etymologies, a seventh-century Christian encyclopedia; an earlier non-Christian encyclopedia by Julius Caius Solinus, itself based on Pliny the Elderâs Historia Naturalis; and âSaint Ambroseâs [fourth-century] Hexameron, an exegetical account of the things of Creationâ (Clark 9).6 Clarkâs admirable documentation reveals an ad hoc intermixture of borrowings, suggesting a âclip and pasteâ procedure (Clark 40). The result is, on the one hand, an increasingly derivative text, consisting largely of quotations from ancient and patristic sources. On the other hand, each addition confirms the importance of knowing about animaliaâcollectively or individually, real or (less often) imagined.
The nature of that knowledge has been subject to dispute. Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp claim that much bestiary information about beasts and birds is accurate; they argue that âit can hardly be said that these later [Second and Third family] English bestiaries could have had any other function than to teach natural historyâ (28 and 8). Few other scholars have found their evidence for accuracy persuasive, but George and Yapp rest their case also on differences from Physiologus noted by others: reduction in scriptural quotations (6), the addition of âEuropean and domestic animalsâ to the exotic beasts that dominate in Ph...