b) The silence of the dogs: acceptance vs. anthropological pessimism in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King

White’s animal symbolism relies on religious, scientific and ideological analogies in its examination of the human condition. To begin with, an obvious source was the medieval bestiary, one of which White himself translated and edited (White, The Book of Beasts). Each animal has an “added symbolism” of vices, virtues, and character traits, already seen in Christ’s dictum to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). The bestiary is not a mere medieval “zoology book” but a h...