A. V. Aylin Malcolm (Author)
Wallace, David (Advisor)
University of Pennsylvania
Wallace, David
Physical Details: 268
Language: English
This dissertation offers an interdisciplinary perspective on later medieval views of animals, focusing on the Latin, French, and English texts circulating in England. Reading across scientific and poetic genres, it considers medieval zoology in relation to its textual and experiential sources, its impacts on social hierarchies, and its continuing relevance for ecological activism. I draw on methods from literary studies, the history of science, and the environmental humanities to explore both the uses of literary devices in philosophical texts and the uses of zoological knowledge in imaginative writing. Chapter 1 examines descriptions of reason, canine intelligence, and nonhuman souls in Adelard of Bath’s Questiones naturales (Natural Questions). I show that the text’s dialogic form reflects its emphasis on reason and dissent as scientific practices, while its uses of figurative language promote cross-species comparisons and identifications. In Chapter 2, I explore observation and experience in Albertus Magnus’s De animalibus (On Animals). I address Albert’s “polyphonic” commentary style; the relationship between his experiential anecdotes and medieval exempla; and his view of animal cognition, including the limits of human understanding and the potential for multispecies knowledge production. Chapter 3 applies trans theory to Marie de France’s Yonec and the Roman de Silence, both of which depict gender and species as unstable, intertwined, and more mutable than social class. Chapter 4 surveys medieval knowledge of cetaceans in a range of scientific and literary texts, including the Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot) and Patience. I demonstrate that whales put pressure on the human/animal boundary and consider how medieval knowledge might benefit modern cetology. Finally, Chapter 5 analyzes poetic accounts of ecological crisis and mourning, focusing on how grief could deprive humans of their characteristic capacities for reason and verbal expression. After considering the emphasis on human responsibility toward nonhuman nature in Cleanness, I examine Geoffrey Chaucer’s depictions of inarticulable grief and interspecies empathy in his Franklin’s Tale, Knight’s Tale, and Book of the Duchess.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Kathryn L. Smithies;
(2020)
Introducing the Medieval Ass
(/isis/citation/CBB143084493/)
Book
Thomas Honegger;
(2020)
Introducing the Medieval Dragon
(/isis/citation/CBB573529632/)
Thesis
Whitney Sperrazza;
(2017)
Perverse Intimacies: Poetic Form and the Early Modern Female Body
(/isis/citation/CBB538194831/)
Article
Başak Ağın;
Z. Gizem Yılmaz;
(2023)
Hearing the Living Metaphors: A Response to Serpil Oppermann’s “Storied Seas”
(/isis/citation/CBB920660053/)
Article
Jeanette Samyn;
(2018)
Form across Literature, Science, and the Arts
(/isis/citation/CBB532958362/)
Article
Brandon Jones;
(2019)
Bloom/Split/Dissolve: Jellyfish, H. D., and Multispecies Justice in Anthropocene Seas
(/isis/citation/CBB341113598/)
Article
Mandy Bloomfield;
(2019)
Widening Gyre: A Poetics of Ocean Plastics
(/isis/citation/CBB982895136/)
Book
Voisenet, Jacques;
Le Goff, Jacques;
(2000)
Bêtes et hommes dans le monde médiéval: Le bestiaire des clers du Ve au XIIe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000640559/)
Book
Eleanor Parker;
(2022)
Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year
(/isis/citation/CBB626126487/)
Book
Tim Flight;
(2021)
Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World
(/isis/citation/CBB925768707/)
Chapter
Wallis, Faith;
(2007)
Caedmon's Created World and the Monastic Encyclopedia
(/isis/citation/CBB001021708/)
Book
Crane, Susan;
(2013)
Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001201601/)
Article
Bolens, Guillemette;
(2011)
La présence du cadavre et son efficacité sémiotique: Morphée chez Geoffrey Chaucer et Caïn dans Mactatio Abel
(/isis/citation/CBB001250363/)
Book
Cartwright, John H.;
Baker, Brian;
(2005)
Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction
(/isis/citation/CBB000772232/)
Thesis
Grigsby, Bryon Lee;
(2000)
“The doctour maketh this descriptioun”: The moral and social meanings of leprosy and bubonic plague in literary, theological, and medical texts of the English Middle Ages and Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB001560944/)
Book
Courtney Weiss Smith;
(2016)
Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB962866556/)
Article
Laura White;
(2019)
Recomposing the Slut: Feminist Taxidermic Practice in Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things
(/isis/citation/CBB399467545/)
Article
Rafał T. Prinke;
Mike A. Zuber;
(2020)
'Learn to Restrain Your Mouth': Alchemical Rumours and their Historiographical Afterlives
(/isis/citation/CBB585369113/)
Article
Pat Rogers;
(2017)
The York Buildings Dragons: Desaguliers, Arbuthnot and Attitudes Towards the Scientific Community
(/isis/citation/CBB009193364/)
Article
Josie Gill;
(2018)
Decolonizing Literature and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB161513314/)
Be the first to comment!