Original scientific paper
The Medieval Chain of Beings: Angels and Men, Women and Animals
Snježana Husić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Comparability of human and non-human animals, which is the idea underpinning medieval bestiaries and bestiary motifs in love poetry, finds its grounds in the Christian conception of human nature as twofold, beastly and angelical at the same time. But some human natures are beastlier than others: in medieval courtly poetry, the male subject is likened to a non-human animal principally when in love, whereas woman is comparable to a beast at all times. Parallels between women and animals are often drawn in misogynist literature of the same period, and that fact, together with the unconditioned comparability of women with beasts in love poetry - as opposed to the conditioned comparability of the male subject - shows that in the medieval hierarchy of creatures there is yet another rank between human and non-human animals. It is women who dwell in that gap, which opens between men and beasts, since the female is represented as lacking the degree of rationality conferred on the male part of mankind.
Keywords
The Middle Ages; Christianity; bestiary; love poetry; misogynist literature; boundaries human/female/animal
Hrčak ID:
191599
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2017.
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