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Women And Other Beasts: A Feminist Perspective On Medieval Bestiaries, Carolynn Van Dyke
Women And Other Beasts: A Feminist Perspective On Medieval Bestiaries, Carolynn Van Dyke
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
Gender and species intersect in the subject-matter, readership, and authorship of medieval beast-books. First, androcentric norms result in inconsistent gender references to species: the grammatically feminine eagle (Aquila) is represented as a stern father, the masculine turtledove (Turtura) as a clinging wife. More broadly, male exemplars represent nearly all species regardless of grammatical gender.
Second, both discursive norms and bibliographic practice presumed an exclusively male readership for the bestiary, but external and internal evidence suggest that bourgeois mothers used bestiaries in educating their children.
Third, a more radical intervention in androcentric bestiary norms is an instance …