IMC 2015: Sessions
Session 309: Being Led Astray by Medieval Animals: Pharmaceutical Badgers, Hairy Bears, and Vanishing Elephants in Late Medieval Europe
Monday 6 July 2015, 16.30-18.00
| Organiser: | Laura Crombie, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Victoria Blud, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York |
| Paper 309-a | Badgers Redux: More Animals in Materia medica (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Medicine, Philosophy, Science |
| Paper 309-b | A Bear's Bad Hair Day: Saracens, Robert Thornton, and Nightmare Bear Fur (Language: English) Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Social History |
| Paper 309-c | Elephants in the Room: Live and Wooden Elephants in Civic Festivals in the Late Medieval Low Countries (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Daily Life, Economics - Urban, Local History |
| Abstract | Engaging with the animal and non-human turn and exploring new perspectives in studying late medieval animals, this interdisciplinary panel will address medical, literary, and civic texts to ask questions about the natural world and how it was perceived by European writers. The panel will address culturally and historically specific associations with animals of various kinds, particularly the ways in which medieval Europeans used, described, and interacted with common and exotic species. The panel considers animals in materia medica, bears in literature, and elephants in urban spectacles in order to examine the representation of animals within cultures and human-animal relationships. |