I
The title of this book raises several questions. What is an âAnimal Turnâ? What, if anything, might it have in common with, say, an interpretative, iconic, performative, reflexive, post-colonial, translational or spatial turn? And, not least, can one defensibly speak of such cultural turns in respect of any centuries before the late twentieth?
There is, as far as I know, no agreed definition of what a âturnâ in this sense is â so we must begin by attempting one that is relevant at least to the concerns of this volume. Turns are not, I think, quite the same as paradigm shifts (pace Kompatscher 18). The latter are more fundamental and hence rarer developments which have the function of replacing one set of values or perspectives by another. Turns, however, do not â usually â replace existing paradigms, but rather add to, complement and above all challenge them.
At its most basic level, a turn is characterized by a heightened scholarly awareness of a particular subject or approach to that subject. Karl Schlögel (265) puts this well, if with rather too many distancing adverbs:
The turn is apparently the modern way of referring to the heightened awareness of dimensions and aspects that were previously neglected⊠It suggests that a multitude of very different perspectives are possible on the same subject. It is apparently an enrichment of the act of seeing, perceiving and processing. Turns ⊠are evidently an indication that something is afoot: an opening, an expansion, a pluralization of dimensions (quoted from Bachmann-Medick, 15).
As an example of what this might mean specifically in the case of literary animals, Roland Borgards (2016, vii) alludes to the fleas on the collar of the gatekeeper in Franz Kafkaâs famously impenetrable story Vor dem Gesetz/Before the Law. These are almost invariably overlooked by scholars, and presumably also by other readers. Yet they are an intrinsic part of the story and, when properly considered, can add an important extra dimension to its interpretation. Especially given that the âman from the countryâ only becomes aware of them after several years of looking with increasing frustration at his interlocutor (the gatekeeper), they remind us of the simultaneous ubiquity and near-invisibility of many animals in a human-dominated world; and they also reveal much about the character and predicament of the âman from the countryâ himself â especially when he proceeds to speak to the fleas and ask them for their support in pleading with their host. Kafkaâs narrator describes this behaviour as âchildishâ; but it is also an extremely powerful image of existential desolation and despair.
A turn is not a turn, however, if it only affects academic readers of Kafka. It has to be more than a heightened scholarly awareness, more than something conjured up in the seclusion of some ivory tower. Rather, it has to interact with and, to some extent, channel concerns that are felt also beyond the narrow confines of academia. By this criterion, the recent surge in scholarly interest in animals certainly bears the hallmarks of a genuine turn, rather than a professorial fad: it is intimately connected with things that are âafootâ in many Western societies more generally. Linda Kalofâs summary of these factors (2017, 1) is far from complete, but brilliantly economical:
The remarkable flourishing of animal studies is due to the widespread recognition of (1) the commodification of animals in a wide variety of human contexts such as the use of animals as food, labor, and the objects of spectacle and science; (2) the degradation of the natural world, a staggering loss of animal habitat, and species extinction; and (3) our increasing need to coexist with other animals in urban, rural, and natural contexts.
Finally, for a scholarly vogue to merit description as a turn, it must make not just a quantitative, but also a qualitative difference to intellectual life. In other words, it must not just result in the production of more books and articles, but must involve or occasion new or revised methodologies that genuinely âenrich the act of seeingâ. Again this is something that the current Animal Turn has done with marked success. It has encouraged new levels of inter- and crossdisciplinarity, not merely within the Humanities but also in bridging the historically stifling divides between âartsâ, âsciencesâ and âsocial sciencesâ. Moreover it has introduced new theorists and theoretical perspectives into academic discussions of animals: Jacques Derrida, Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss and Donna Haraway, to name but three, have had an enormous impact on many scholars working on animals in the last twenty years, and hence an at least indirect influence on the present volume. Above all, perhaps, Animal Studies has consistently integrated into its analysis the perspectives, subjectivity and agency of animals themselves â be they domesticated or wild, real or imaginary. Kafkaâs fleas are just one example among many.
II
The present volume responds to the current Animal Turn by considering two questions that I, as a twenty-first-century medievalist, have been asking myself for some time: is it possible to speak of an Animal Turn (understood, mutatis mutandis, as outlined above) in respect of any medieval century? And, if so, which one? The answers to be proposed in what follows are â with of course all the usual scholarly caveats â âyesâ, and âthe thirteenthâ.
When we contemplate the thirteenth century in the light of the three characteristics of a turn we have just adumbrated, it seems legitimate to speak of it having accommodated an Animal Turn. First, there can be no doubt that, especially from around 1220 onwards, thirteenth-century scholars had a heightened awareness of animals. This came from two main sources. On the one hand, Michael Scotâs Latin translation of the natural historical writings of Aristotle had a huge impact on thirteenth-century academic life, visible not least in the enormous upsurge of learned writing about animals in Latin. Works as diverse as the encyclopaedias of Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), Thomas of CantimprĂ© and Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the collections of nature exempla that arose in their wake, and Emperor Frederick IIâs monumental treatise on falconry would have been inconceivable without the impetus to study animals provided by Aristotle. At roughly the same time that Michel Scot was translating Aristotle, however, Pope Innocent III was instituting reforms at the Fourth Lateran Council of the Church that in short order would give rise, over much of Europe, to a significant increase in the amount of sermons preached and moral instruction delivered in parish churches. Given that stories involving animals were a highly popular feature of such teaching designed for the laity, this too led to a major growth in moral theological literature about them.
The latter development was one way in which the heightened scholarly awareness of animals was grounded outside the usual circles of learned Latinity â whose functions in medieval society can be equated at least roughly with those of the university-based academic community of today. Still more striking evidence of an Animal Turn that had an impact beyond studious intellectuals can be found, however, in the chivalric world of the lay aristocracy. This too witnessed a variety of changing perspectives and practices with regard to animals. For example, technological and tactical developments changed certain aspects of a knightâs partnership with his warhorse; and a perceptible boom in the use of animals in heraldic insignia both reflected and stimulated an enhanced interest in animals more generally â including mythical ones and those not indigenous to Europe. Underlying this development seems to have been a greater degree of awareness â very noticeable in imaginative literature â of animalsâ usefulness for the construction or reconstruction of chivalric identity in an age where it was commonly seen as being under threat. Moreover the widely documented association between aristocratic ladies and lapdogs, which derived from an exponential growth in the keeping of pets from the early thirteenth century, implies that such considerations to some extent transcended gender boundaries.
Our third defining characteristic of a turn was that it should involve a new methodology, a new way of seeing; and this certainly obtained in respect of the thirteenth-century Animal Turn we are postulating. Again the key figure was Aristotle, as channelled by Michael Scot. In contrast to the traditional, Augustinian view that the study of animals was in essence a means to an end (that of teaching humans about God and how they might relate to him), Aristotle demonstrated, and encouraged in others, a strong interest in animals in their own right and for their own sake. In doing so he modelled a new reliance on observation and reason, to supplement data passed down by venerable authorities; and he â and the encyclopaedists who followed him â evinced a strong desire to systematize what was known about the natural world, in a way that seems to us now in some respects more modern than medieval.
The last paragraph in particular could easily give the impression that we are dealing here with a fundamental paradigm shift, rather than a modifying, challenging cultural turn. That, however, is not really the case. The thirteenth century was, not only but not least in relation to animals, an age of continuity as well as of innovation. This can be seen in the significant levels of physical violence, often casual and brutal, which thirteenth-century people continued to visit upon animals on a regular basis. Moreover the new Aristotelian methods of scientific analysis did not entirely supersede the older, Augustinian idea of nature as a book designed to teach us about God. Indeed in many ways they complemented, enhanced and revivified the inherited didactic traditions, not least by anchoring them more firmly in the reality of what animals were actually like.
Most fundamentally perhaps, the pre-Darwinian idea of a clear anthropological difference separating rational humans from irrational animals remained intact in 1300, just as it had in 1200. Self-evidently no medieval author would think of her- or himself as an animal â as I, and no doubt most people today, are happy to do. Nevertheless various aspects of thirteenth-century culture did pose informed and challenging questions about the nature of animality â and hence, inevitably, about the nature of humanity as well; and it was becoming increasingly clear that these questions could no longer be fobbed off with straightforward rehearsals of time-honoured notions about human uniqueness and superiority.
III
In what follows I argue the case for positing a thirteenth-century Animal Turn in several stages. Chapter 2 focuses on Aristotle and his influence â with regard both to the information his newly translated works transmitted, and to the intellectual methods and habits they fostered. Two paradigmatically Aristotelian Latin works from the thirteenth century feature particularly prominently in the chapter, namely the De animalibus of Albert the Great (part commentary on Aristotle and part nature encyclopaedia), and the De arte venandi cum avibus of Emperor Frederick II. I also consider Aristotleâs complex and sometimes confused musings about the relationship between the human and the animal, and trace their influence on sources as diverse as Albertâs conception of pygmies and comic tales which portray Aristotle himself being ridden like a horse by the inamorata of Alexander the Great.
Chapter 3 focuses on the vastly increased use of animals in clerical attempts, particularly those following on from the Fourth Lateran Council, to improve the theological education and moral behaviour of the laity. Stories about animals and their characteristics proved extremely useful to this enterprise, sweetening didactic pills, facilitating the comprehension of unfamiliar or difficult ideas and bringing home moral messages in down-to-earth ways that all could relate to. I argue, however, that, far from supplanting older medieval traditions of using animals to convey religious and/or ethical meanings, the ânewâ Aristotelian ways of looking at the natural world renewed and enriched them. This can be seen for example in the Dominican encyclopaedist Thomas of CantimprĂ©âs habit of providing his readers both with fresh information about exotic species and with allegorical interpretations of their behaviour which could be slotted neatly into sermons; in the development of systematically ordered collections of nature exempla; and in the remodelling even of some of the most ancient animal allegories to take account of newly observed ways in which the creatures in question actually behaved.
Chapter 4 turns away from explicitly learned environments to explore various functions and portrayals of animals in the context of thirteenth-century chivalry. It focuses particularly on the many and diverse attempts made by members of the lay aristocracy to define or redefine their identity through the medium of animals â whether as symbols of status or wealth, heraldic emblems, or companions in peace and war. Particularly through a discussion of knightsâ relationships with their horses as these are portrayed in vernacular courtly romances, the chapter also reveals the remarkable extent to which some thirteenth-century lay aristocrats were ready to question and challenge traditionally held conceptions of the âanthropological differenceâ between humans and animals. Sometimes, as I show, human and equine identities are presented as so intertwined and mutually dependent as to seem, in effect, to merge.
Finally Chapter 5, which is built on sources from a wide variety of social contexts, foregrounds a tension that was as characteristic of the thirteenth-century Animal Turn as it is of its twenty-first-century equivalent â namely that between violence towards animals and affection for them (the dilemma of the carnivorous pet-lover, as it were). The chapter presents St Francis of Assisi as having been prey to a perhaps surprising degree to this tension, and goes on to explore several examples of explicit violence, as well as evidence that pets in particular were treated with increasing levels of affection. Overall it seems highly likely that acts of violence towards animals remained much more common in the thirteenth century than expressions of affection for them. Even here, however, one can observe some signs of change: in contexts where violence towards animals was at least implicitly equated with violence towards humans, or where the lot of animals was materially improved by technological change. A key example of this is the discovery of new papermaking techniques in thirteenth-century Italy, which led to a gradual decline in the use of parchment, and hence in the mass murdering of calves to make books.
Throughout this discussion a point is made of consulting a wide variety of textual sources: these include epics, romances, lyric poems, natural historical studies, encyclopaedias, sermons, collections of nature exempla, travel literature, saintsâ lives and a treatise on falconry. It is anticipated that some of these will be familiar to many readers, and others less so. The latter is likely to apply particularly to several works (discussed mainly in the later chapters) that were written in the German-speaking lands. If this means that it is a side effect of my argument to enhance the profile of primary sources that deserve to be better and more widely known, that is of course all to the good.
IV
So where does this volume fit within, and how might it be said to extend, the parameters of existing research into medieval animals? Self-evidently, first of all, it takes account of â and responds to â the many important contributions made in recent years by medievalists working within the area known as Animal Studies or (not least in Germany) Human-Animal Studies â âan interdisciplinary field that explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them. Central to the field is an exploration of the ways in which animal lives intersect with human societiesâ (DeMello 4).
The earliest of these contributions was that of Joyce E. Salisbury, the first edition of whose book The Beast Within appeared in 1994 and has proved highly influential. A particular and, for its time, unusual strength of Salisburyâs volum...