When the owl argues with the nightingale about who is more valuable, the late twelfth-century English poem deals with the specifics of each animal, down to the keen eyesight of the owl and the aesthetic abundance of the nightingale’s song. Most readers assume that the text only marginally concerns these birds, whose debate elaborately encodes matters actually about humans.1 I believe this to be true, but wish to examine more closely a medieval text that helps to authorize centuries of animal appropriation, one of the many documents that ultimately make animals “mean.” In the medieval bestiary, we observe the subversion of the world of nature (constituted in the distinct form of animals) to the world of discourse, and the semiotic implications of this sub-version. - [Author]

Language: English

ISBN: 0-8153-1315-2