Book description
During the Renaissance, horses-long considered the privileged, even
sentient companions of knights-errant-gradually lost their special
place on the field of battle and, with it, their distinctive status in
the world of chivalric heroism. Parrots, once the miraculous,
articulate companions of popes and emperors, declined into figures of
mindless mimicry. Cats, which were tortured by Catholics in the Middle
Ages, were tortured in the Reformation as part of the Protestant
attack on Catholicism. And sheep, the model for Agnus Dei imagery,
underwent transformations at once legal, material, and spiritual as a
result of their changing role in Europe's growing manufacturing and
trade economies. While in the Middle Ages these nonhumans were endowed
with privileged social associations, personal agency, even the ability
to reason and speak, in the early modern period they lost these
qualities at the very same time that a new emphasis on, and
understanding of, human character was developing in European literature.
In Animal Characters Bruce Thomas Boehrer follows five
species-the horse, the parrot, the cat, the turkey, and the
sheep-through their appearances in an eclectic mix of texts, from
romances and poetry to cookbooks and natural histories. He shows how
dramatic changes in animal character types between 1400 and 1700
relate to the emerging economy and culture of the European
Renaissance. In early modern European culture, animals not only served
humans as sources of labor, companionship, clothing, and food; these
nonhuman creatures helped to form an understanding of personhood.
Incorporating readings of Shakespeare's plays, Milton's Paradise
Lost, Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, and other works,
Boehrer's series of animal character studies illuminates a fascinating
period of change in interspecies relationships.
"An interesting take on the problematic question of literary
character, as well as a significant contribution to scholarship on
anthropocentrism and the cultural history of personhood. The
enthusiasm and scope of the writing make it an engaging read, and the
depth and breadth of the source material is quite
fascinating."-The Medieval Review
Bruce Thomas Boehrer is Bertram H. Davis Professor and Frances
Cushing Ervin Professor of English at Florida State University. His
Parrot Culture: Our 2500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most
Talkative Bird is also available from the University of Pennsylvania
Press.
