Langdon, Alison - kb.osu.edu

ENARRATIO 18 (2013) COPYRIGHT AUTHOR 2015 THE NOSE KNOWS: ENCOUNTERING THE CANINE IN BISCLAVRET Alison langdon A dog is in general sagacious, but particularly with respect to his master; for when he has for some time lost him in a crowd, he depends more upon his nose than upon his eyes; and, in endeavouring to find him, he first looks about, and then applies his nose, for greater certainty, to his clothes, as if nature had placed all the powers of infallibility in that feature. Gerald of Wales, Journey Through Wales The nose symbolizes discernment, whereby we elect virtue and reject sin. Gregory the Great, Book of Pastoral Rule For much of literary history, scholars have tended to focus on the symbolic valence of animals, to read their behavior and characteristics as representative of explicitly human interests and concerns. In the past medievalists have perhaps been even more prone to this, given that many of our sources providing descriptions of animal behavior, such as bestiaries, similarly emphasize the metaphorical or allegorical over the Thus when we read something like Bisclavret, Marie de France s twelfth-century Anglo-Norman lai, scholars frequently discuss its werewolf protagonist as a foil for his much more beastly if wholly human wife.

Langdon 53 Hummes devure, grant mal fait, Es granz fore[z] converse e vait. (9-12) The werewolf is a wild beast: when it is in that frenzy, it devours people and does great harm.

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