FREN-UA 968-001 Topics: Premodern Animal Literature: Beast As Text (Taught in French)
Premodern animalittérature: beast as text
This course will ask why animals and literature belong together
in premodern times. Reflecting on
what beasts and texts could be thought to have in common, we will sample different kinds of writing from the period: bestiaries which ascribe
theological significance to animals, fables that use animals to model
practical
learning, and mythological and fairy tales whose plots involve animals
(like
Red Riding Hood) or animal transformations and hybrids (like
werewolves). We will also consider how animals convey meaning outside
the domain of the
purely literary: as juridical persons that can be tried for crimes they
are
suspected of committing (animal trials persisted into the eighteenth
century); in
private zoos and other forms of animal ownership; in clothing and coats
of
arms; and most basically of all, at least in the early part of the
period, in
the manufacture of books (made from parchment, a refined form of animal
skin). Our research will help us find out why, as
Lévi-Strauss put it, “animals are good to think with,” and how reading beasts
as texts challenges our understanding of reading (and readers) as much as it does of beasts (and texts). Most of the texts we shall study are short and will be made
available in a course packet or online.
|
