The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature

Author / Editor
Yamamoto, Dorothy.

Title
The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature

Published
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.

Physical Description
xii, 257 pp.

Description
Explores relationships of the human body to human identity in Middle English literature, focusing on representations of the animal world and of "wild men" as they define the margins (and hence the center) of the human. Includes discussions of bestiaries in general, foxes, birds, heraldic imagery, hunting, wild men, were-wolves, and shape-shifters. Assesses the hunt-bedroom association of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Melusine as the epitome of women, "Valentine and Orson," and heraldic and bestial imagery in KnT (a revised expansion of "Heraldry and the Knight's Tale," originally published in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93 (1992): 207-15).

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
Knight and His Tale.