Understanding Animals 1150-1350

Animals are 'good to think with' (Levi-Strauss), which is why they are the subject of this book investigating changing attitudes towards nature in the thirteenth century. Animals were always a significant element in religious thought and art in the Middle Ages. But in the thirteenth century increased access to ancient learning combined with direct observation and more general social, cultural and intellectual changes transformed traditional ways of thinking about them. This book explores this transformation and shows how far the new scholarly advances were reconciled with existing interpretations of animals and of their symbolic or allegorical meanings.