| Popis: |
The study traces the textual relationship between medieval animal descriptions by gathering seemingly disparate sources about a particular animal behavior—spraying the pursuers when chased. Through the diligence of medieval Latin authors, the classic bonacon of Phrygia, as seen on the Hereford Mappamundi for example, is shown to have begotten a range of curious creatures such as the misplaced onager of Gervase of Tilbury, and the ferocious Bohemian loni, first appearing in Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s thirteenth-century encyclopedia, and becoming indelible from Bohemia’s image for centuries to come. The increasingly complex afterlife of these passages, especially a number of similar quadrupeds in works by Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Cantimpre, and Giovanni Marignoli, show an even more diffuse picture whereby cognate animals proliferate by splitting and merging existing passages with abandon. At a glance, these animals seem to have little in common, but the intertextual relationship between texts and images about them sheds light to more commonalities than their odd defense mechanism. On the lexical level, nuanced discrepancies in word use and phrasing are used to explain some of the trajectories detected in descriptions of the bonacon and its textual offspring. Finally, overviewing a range of variations, it becomes clear that the beast of many names and forms is but an adaptable cultural construct, whose enduring popularity stems not only from its scatological appeal but from its versatility in various contexts and genres. Moving from Solinus to Early Modern encyclopedias; moving from Anatolia to the “northern provinces” of medieval Europe; moving their projectile attack from the backside to the front; and moving across genres and formats in textual transmission, these animals are certainly dynamic in more ways than one. |
