In the skin of a beast : sovereignty and animality in medieval France

Resource Information

The work In the skin of a beast : sovereignty and animality in medieval France represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

In the skin of a beast : sovereignty and animality in medieval France

Title remainder

sovereignty and animality in medieval France

Statement of responsibility

Peggy McCracken

Creator

• McCracken, Peggy

Author

• McCracken, Peggy

Subject

• French literature -- To 1500 -- History and criticism
• Hides and skins -- Political aspects -- France -- History
• Hides and skins -- Symbolic aspects -- France -- History
• Hides and skins in literature
• Human-animal relationships -- Political aspects -- France -- History
• Human-animal relationships in literature
• Animals -- Symbolic aspects -- France -- History
• Mensch
• Mittelalter
• Sovereignty in literature
• Symbolik
• Tiere
• Literatur
• Frankreich

Language

eng

Summary

In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet - whether as friends or foes - issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. 'In the Skin of a Beast' shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf's desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty - lineage and gender among them - are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism

Cataloging source

ICU/DLC

Dewey number

840.9/001

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

PQ155.H43

LC item number

M33 2017

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography