Gender and species intersect in the subject-matter, readership, and authorship of medieval beast-books. ... a more radical intervention in androcentric bestiary norms is an instance of female authorship. I argue that the four animal sections of Hildegard of Bingen’s Subtilitates diversarum naturam creaturm (“Subtleties of the different natures of creature”), or Physica, constitute a beast-book, structurally similar to Physiologus (the ancestral bestiary) but very different in effect. The animals in Physiologus are fundamentally textual; those of Physica are material. The telos of bestiary animals is human understanding and instruction; the explications in Physica concern bodily healing, supported by representations of interspecies analogy and reciprocity. The creatures of Physiologus are signifiers; those of Physica are agents. They are, moreover, gendered agents—predominantly gendered female, explicitly and by default. But they remain materially non-human. As an alternative to both androcentrism and speciest humanism, Physica offers genuine ecofeminism. - [Abstract]

Language: English