What is it about?
Is earth simply inert dirt, or a wriggling living mass of relationships and exchanges beyond the human? This chapter finds in early english medieval riddles and bestiaries a careful but uneasy attention to how animals turn their skills to making living space in earth. Through analysis of depictions of moles, foxes, badgers, ants, hyenas and more, this work argues that these texts betray a cultural fear of what is really happening in the earth beneath human feet.
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Why is it important?
Earth is the ground and force against which the animal symbols in these texts have been defined, but they have not before been analysed on this basis. In individual texts, new discoveries can be made (the paradoxical earthliness evoked in The Phoenix; a new possible solution for Exeter Riddle 17) as well as arguing for the validity of finding environmental attention even in allegorical or symbolic texts.
Perspectives
Writing this chapter was a joy as it is part of the four book Elements series drawing together a vast range of perspectives and texts on Earth, Water, Air and Fire, underpinned by exchanges, workshops, and networks that would not otherwise have been instigated.
Alexandra Paddock
University of Oxford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Life in Earth: Animal Relations with Earth in the Physiologus, Bestiaries and Early Medieval Riddles, November 2024, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004712430_013.
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