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Just like we do today, people in medieval times struggled with the concept of human exceptionalism and the significance of other creatures. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medieval bestiary. Sarah Kay's exploration of French and Latin bestiaries offers fresh insight into how this prominent genre challenged the boundary between its human readers and other animals. Bestiaries present accounts of animals whose fantastic behaviors should be imitated or avoided, depending on the given trait. In a highly original argument, Kay suggests that the association of beasts with books is here both literal and material, as nearly all surviving bestiaries are copied on parchment made of animal skin, which also resembles human skin. Using a rich array of examples, she shows how the content and materiality of bestiaries are linked due to the continual references in the texts to the skins of other animals, as well as the ways in which the pages themselves repeatedly—and at times, it would seem, deliberately—intervene in the reading process. A vital contribution to animal studies and medieval manuscript studies, this book sheds new light on the European bestiary and its profound power to shape readers'own identities.

Le premier trait qui distingue la représentation animalière des représentations végétales ou humaines est son ancienneté et la précocité surprenante de son apparition. Le répertoire de l'art préhistorique est en effet tout entier constitué d'animaux.

Voici un livre bien original sur la littérature africaine. (...) En fouillant un peu, que peut-on bien trouver au fond d'un écrivain africain? D'abord et avant tout, des bestioles! Des idées de bestioles! Des rêves de bestioles! Des hantises de bestioles! (...) Rien d'étonnant à cela! L'Afrique, c'est connu, ne constitue pas simplement la meilleure réserve animalière du monde. L'animal est aussi une métaphore essentielle de son expression culturelle. En se limitant au seul bestiaire, on peut sans aucune difficulté tracer la carte littéraire de la Guinée avec ses différentes zones d'enracinement, ses sources d'inspiration, ses confluences thématiques et les méandres de ses différents styles et de ses différentes formes.

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Oxford Brookes University.

The medieval bestiary was a contribution to didactic religious literature, addressing concerns central to all walks of Christian and secular life. These essays analyze the bestiary from both literary and art historical perspectives, exploring issues including kinship, romance, sex, death, and the afterlife.