Human/Non-Human: Gender Dynamics and the Female/Animal Condition in Medieval Culture

Resumen

The dissolution of the frontiers between the human and non-human animal realms was a common motif in ancient cultures, where primeval bonds between animals and humans were taken for granted. Legatee to quite diverse and even contradictory perspectives and aspects of such connections, the Middle Ages produced a concomitant complex net of categories from which these dynamics were to be surveyed. The ubiquitous presence of the animal element is shown clearly in medieval literary and artistic representations as evidence of its crucial role in the shaping of perceptions of sexuality, food, natural sustainability, property or governance. The cultural construction of gender allowed a short distance between the animal and the female conditions, given the essential material and reproductive values with which they were equally endowed. Processes such as hybridation and metamorphoses reveal the ambiguous space occupied by women’s bodies as intermediaries between culture and nature, and thus, as marginal destabilising elements in the configuration of the boundaries between the human and animal spheres. This paper will analyse some of the medieval representations of the female element in its proximity to the animal nature in order to reflect on the relationship between the social construction of women and the oppression of animals.