Albert the Great on the ‘Language’ of Animals

Resnick, Irven M.; Kitchell, Kenneth F.

doi:10.5840/acpq199670118

Cited by 12 publications

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“…A theriomorphism, the representation of deities in animal form, present in the cult of Dionysus (Bacchus) reveals the ancient association between animals and wine. The ancients imagined the god of wine to be accompanied by hybrid characters with the body parts of the horse and goat, as well as being surrounded by animals such as the bull, donkey, mule, camel, snake, dolphin, fox, lynx, leopard and tiger [61][62][63].…”

Section: Cultural Concepts Connecting Animals and Winementioning

confidence: 99%

Drunken snakes and sober owls: ancient authors on the relationship between animals and wine

Kostuch

2022

Addiction

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Aims In the article, ancient concepts linking animals and wine are discussed. This paper provides a description of animals that in antiquity were considered to be especially fond of grapes and wine, as well as animals that were, for various reasons, given wine to drink by humans, and animals that in ancient literature had an averse association with wine. In the paper, the author attempts to answer the following questions, what was the conceptual framework for the tales about drunk animals? In what circumstances were observations of animals becoming inebriated conducted? Which animal species were considered as most susceptible to the effects of wine? Last, was wine believed to affect animals and humans in a similar way? Methods Ancient literature provides a set of extant information about animals that willingly become inebriated with grapes or are given wine by humans, which deserves a separate analysis. The ancient authors commonly interspersed narration with information about the animals and invoked personal experiences of contact with the described animal and information obtained from those who had the opportunity to conduct ‘zoological’ observations or even medical experiments. Results There is a large group of animals that appear in ancient accounts consuming alcohol in the form of fermented fruit and wine. The ancients held the mostly incorrect belief that snakes had an enormous predilection for wine; moreover, contemporary research confirms that, as the ancients rightly observed, insects and birds do display a fondness for fermented fruit and wine. It was correctly observed that an excess of wine induced extreme states, such as sleepiness and aggression in animals, in a manner similar to humans. Conclusions Accounts in ancient literature show a close association between animals and wine existed among the Greeks and Romans.

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Section: Cultural Concepts Connecting Animals and Winementioning

confidence: 99%

Drunken snakes and sober owls: ancient authors on the relationship between animals and wine

Kostuch

2022

Addiction

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Illogical Thinking: Problems Concerning Medieval Notions of “Idiocy” and “Rationality”

Metzler

2021

Studies in Universal Logic

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Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris

Wei

2020

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This book seeks to understand what masters of theology at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century had to say about similarities and differences between humans and animals. It explores the ways in which they related similarities and differences to each other, holding them in productive tension, so as to construct a boundary between humans and animals, or to query and blur such a boundary. In recent years some wonderful work has been published on the representation of animals in the vernacular literature of medieval Europe. Literary scholars have offered many insights into the ways in which animals and humans were understood in relation to each other. To give just three of the most outstanding and recent examples, Susan Crane, in her Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain, has argued that the 'binary conception' of a boundary between animals and humans 'must now melt into a multiplicity of intersecting and competing distinctions that better reflect medieval ways of thinking', pointing to 'the plurality and density of medieval thought about animals'. 1 She identifies 'an exploratory mode that takes man and other beasts to be unsettled categories coming into definition through relationship'. 2 Peggy McCracken has argued that medieval 'literary texts use human-animal encounters to explore the legitimacy of authority and dominion over others', and that 'human dominion over animals is revealed as 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 expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism even as they reinstate its claims', with the 'uncertain boundary

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Albert the Great on the ‘Language’ of Animals

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Drunken snakes and sober owls: ancient authors on the relationship between animals and wine

Drunken snakes and sober owls: ancient authors on the relationship between animals and wine

Illogical Thinking: Problems Concerning Medieval Notions of “Idiocy” and “Rationality”

Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris

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