Medieval Storytime: Animals

For this week’s medieval storytime, Danièle reads a collection of descriptions, fables, and poems all featuring animals. From venomous toads to proud peacocks and malicious whales, the Middle Ages shares its moral worldview through the animal kingdom.

Some of the translations used in this podcast:

Tales from the Gesta Romanorum, by Charles Swan (New York, 1845)

Marie de France, Fables, translated by Harriet Spiegel (University of Toronto Press, 1987)

The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, translated by T. H. White (Dover Publications, 2010)

The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Nigel Cliff (Penguin, 2016)

Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore, by Michael J. Curley (University of Chicago Press, 2009)

An Anthology of Old English Poetry, by Charles W. Kennedy (Oxford University Press, 1960)

The creator and host of The Medieval Podcast is Danièle Cybulskie. Click here to visit her website or follow her on Twitter @5MinMedievalist

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Top Image: The Peacock in the Aberdeen Bestiary – Wikimedia Commons