The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature

This book explores a wide variety of medieval writings (by Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain-poet, and Henryson, among others) to answer the question, In what way did medieval people think about animals? It ranges from birds and foxes, to the Bestiary, heraldry, and hunting, to the enigmatic figure of the Wild Man.

Animals and wild men are everywhere in medieval culture, but their role in illuminating medieval constructions of humanity has never been properly explored. This book gathers together a large number of themes and subjects (including Bestiary, heraldry, and hunting), and examines them as part of a unified discourse about the body and its creative transformations. Human and animal are terms traditionally opposed to one another, but their relationship must always be characterized by a dynamic instability. Humans scout into the animal zone, manipulating and re-shaping animal bodies in accordance with their own social imagining–yet these forays are risky since they lead to questions about what humanity consists in, and whether it can ever be forfeited. Studies of birds, foxes, game animals, the wild man, and shape-shifting women fill out the argument of this book, which sheds new light on works by Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain-poet, and Henryson, as well as showing that many less familiar texts have rewards that an informed reading can reveal.