In the skin of a beast : sovereignty and animality in medieval France / Peggy McCracken.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCracken, Peggy, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--To 1500--History and criticism.

French literature.

Hides and skins in literature.

Human-animal relationships in literature.

Sovereignty in literature.

Hides and skins--Symbolic aspects--France--History.

Hides and skins.

Animals--Symbolic aspects--France--History.

Animals.

Hides and skins--Political aspects--France--History.

Human-animal relationships--Political aspects--France--History.

Human-animal relationships.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (217 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : color illustrations

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet-whether as friends or foes-issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. In the Skin of a Beast shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf's desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty-lineage and gender among them-are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Color Plates

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. Wearing Animals: Skin, Survival, and Sovereignty

Chapter Two. The Social Wolf: Domestication, Affect, and Social Contract

Chapter Three. Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Sovereign: Skin, Heraldry, and the Beast

Chapter Four. Snakes and Women: Recognition, Knowledge, and Sovereignty

Chapter Five. Becoming-Human, Becoming-Sovereign: Gender, Genealogy, and the Wild Man

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226459080

022645908X

OCLC:

980875216