The Beast Within
A Paranormal Romance

Caveat: I didn't finish this because I felt I'd read it already, years ago. See below. A disappointment. Clearly the Second Edition of Salisbury's oft-cited book witnesses to the still rising interest in animals in critical theory and social history. It's a fine thing for this book to be available i......more

Hmm. An interesting survey of changing representational attitudes of animals in the Christian middle ages that often does not feel as substantial as it would like to be. Part of the problem is that Salisbury frequently reads like a very fine summariser of too limited a range of previous publications......more

Much new informatioN This text brought up new insights and angles I'd never considered before. Revealed many ways to consider relations between people and animals. Oddly reached this last book from Nokia to Western b estuaries to this. All instructive.......more

Library read. This book examines in very broad strokes, the categorisation of animals and humans, and their dividing lines in Christian europe from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. Joyce Sailsbury argues that the period started with a christian view that animals were completely different to h......more

I enjoyed this study a lot. Very well organized, Salisbury starts from the "real" function of animals in the Middle Ages until she gets to the metaphorical function, which means a change in the paradigm of that time. I've got some reservations, though. I've been reading a lot about medieval bestiarie......more