bestiary

July 4, 2023July 6, 2023

Category	Textual Form
Featured In	Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)

The bestiary was a type of book popular during the Middle Ages that featured descriptions of beasts alongside illuminations of their appearances. These included real and imagined animals, and their descriptions often came with anecdotes and religious symbolisms to provide moral instruction to the reader.

Production of a bestiary was an arduous and costly process because its texts and illuminations were typically done entirely by hand with intricate details and vivid colouring (involving gold and silver decorations), and was not the work of a single person.

The Aberdeen Bestiary (c. 1200) is considered one of the finest and most beautiful examples due to its particularly lavish, gilded illuminations.

_{REFLECTIONS AND ENGAGEMENT}

During the course on Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330), a number in the class produced their own creative bestiary entries to better engage with and understand the characteristics of this textual form. Their works are compiled here in alphabetical order, with links to their full reflections on their projects and the bestiary in general:

THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY

_{FOLIO I}

The Capricornus-Xuanwu is a hybrid celestial beast of the northern summer skies and southern winter skies. Beheld in the west, it takes the shape of a goat with fish tail, coiling as a serpent round the form of a black monstrous turtle beheld in the east. The Xuanwu turtle is half-lion, half-dragon, half-snake, a fierce and mysterious guardian of the north with the power of water. The sea-goat shares this affinity, but it is also endowed with the abundance of earth, of which the infant Zeus once suckled upon through the horns. It is a confused creature at war with itself always, but alas, such is also the nature of the world.

^{~ TOH HONG JIN (’23)
READ MORE}

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

July 4, 2023July 4, 2023

Siren

CREATIVE PROJECT BY HUANG HUANYAN (’23)

Siren
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO VII}

The sirens are part human, part bird and part fish. When they tried to fly, their tails weighed them down. When they tried to swim, their wings got in the way. Hence, they are condemned to an eternity of sitting on the rocks in the middle of the sea. Their sorrowful songs promise greedy sailors of bountiful treasure, drawing them closer, becoming prey.

Artist’s Remarks

I chose a siren as the subject of my bestiary entry, with the slight modification of adding wings to this figure. According to some early records, the siren was originally half human and half bird, before it shifted to become more similar to what we know as the mermaid: half human and half fish. In the literature of classical Antiquity, sirens were portrayed as cruel devils, singing songs that lured in humans passing by before devouring them. In the spirit of the bestiaries, where animals are provided a more humanistic quality even if they are human-eating monsters, I have decided to provide a reason why they had to lure their food closer – that they are, in fact, helpless and bound to specific locations in the sea.

With this revised characterisation in mind, the original transcript that I had drafted was this:

“The siren is part human, part bird, and part fish. They are human above their abdomens, and fish from the waist down, with wings extending from their necks. When they try to fly, their tails weigh them down as they flap hopelessly in the air. When they try to swim, their wings get in the way, so they are too slow to catch any prey. Hence, they are condemned to sit on rocks their whole life, weeping when there are no humans around and singing when they see a ship pass by. Their songs, filled with sadness, draw in unassuming humans with the promise of treasure that they can’t reach. And thus, the tempted humans are never seen again. The story of sirens shows that those who fail to maintain a strong resolve will be exploited by the devious.”

However, as I was transcribing this onto the illumination in an attempt to imitate the hand used in the bestiary manuscripts, I had to shorten the text significantly.

I decided on the medium of acrylic on canvas for this project due to the increased versatility of colors that I could use for the illumination, inspired by the more colorful illuminations looked at in class. The background of the canvas was first painted light brown with blotches of darker brown to emulate the color of old manuscripts. As precious metals such as gold were often used in medieval illuminations, I decided to use gold to line the borders of the illumination too. In addition, I decided to depict a lone siren weeping, with the intention of drawing more sympathy towards the siren’s unfortunate plight of being stuck in the middle of the ocean, with few options for mobility.

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Warrior-Horse Chimera (Inversion of the Known)

CREATIVE PROJECT BY DEXTER LIN (’23)

Inversion of the Known
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO VIII}

A warrior-horse chimera breathes fire upon a man. These creatures appeared one day on our shores, following the fair faced men (which also forms the top half of this chimera) as they wreak havoc on our lands. They are accompanied with a less fearsome cousin, who carries a device. A thing like a ball of stone comes out of this device’s entrails: it comes out shooting sparks and raining fire.¹

Artist’s Remarks

This artwork attempts an inversion of the known and unknown in medieval depictions of animals. Animals are depicted with varying levels of accuracy in relation to their ‘real’ form (as they exist in reality). This is––on average––dependent on the geographic proximity of said animal to the person who drew it. For instance, even the more savage depictions of the wild boar still largely stay true to reality.

_{Wild boar from a treatise on the medicinal uses of animals. Despite the boar being made to look more intimidating and savage, it generally still looks like a wild boar.²}

On the other hand, animals such as the whale are portrayed in a much less accurate way. This was due to the fact that the only mode of painter-animal contact was through written descriptions or carvings that the painter had seen before. The results were considerably more mythical in nature, even as they were based on real animals that existed.

_{A whale (with legs!) has toppled a boat––its sailors presumably drowned.³}

_{What seems to be a giant fish represents a whale in the process of toppling a boat.⁴}

These bestiary images provide a valuable insight not only into how medieval Europeans drew animals, but also their level of interaction with specific animals.

With this in mind, I attempted to move the bestiary outside the European context: how would the native peoples of the Americas have portrayed the foreign creatures that came to their shores alongside the violent project of colonization? By replacing the illustrations of fantastical animals (i.e., animals that existed far from the scriptoriums of Europe) with horses and donkeys (animals closely tied to Spanish expansion in Latin America) in bestiaries, we can gain a deeper understanding of the cultural impact of colonialism on both the colonizers and the colonized.

_{Notice the relative realism of the horse compared to the tiger.⁵}

The horse was not only ubiquitous, but often seen as an equal partner to the medieval man. Of the horse, Paul Rogers writes that “it would be difficult to find such an omnipresent and universally positive portrayal of a beast in [medieval] times.”⁶ Indeed, one reason for this omnipresence in representation was the permeation of the horse at multiple levels of medieval European society. The Aberdeen Bestiary names three categorizations of horse, each with their specialization: “One is the noble war-horse, capable of carrying heavy weights; the second is the everyday kind, used for drawing loads but unsuitable for riding. The third is born from a combination of different species, and is also called bigener, hybrid, because it is born of mixed stock, like a mule.”⁷ Interestingly, the horse is not reserved for the nobility––there were horses for everyday needs, and an implied lower-class horse in the mule. The horse was ubiquitous in literature precisely because it was ubiquitous in the lived experience of the medieval man. This likely led to its standardized portrayal, one that was very similar to its real-life form.

_{An ass with elongated ears.⁸}

Like the horse, donkeys (or asses) were similarly portrayed in a realistic fashion. Indeed, this is likely due to the frequent contact between the average medieval European and the ass. Isidore of Seville writes that: “The ass (asinus) and the small ass (asellus) are so called from sitting (sedere), as if the word were asedus. The ass took this name, which is better suited to horses, because before people captured horses, they began by domesticating the ass. Indeed, it is a slow animal and balks for no reason; it allowed itself to be domesticated as soon as mankind wished it.”⁹ This implies that the connection between medieval Europeans and the donkey was a collaboration strengthened through centuries of cohabitation and cooperation.

Unlike the medieval Europeans, however, the native peoples of the Americas had not such contact with either the horse or the ass. Compare the earlier descriptions of the horse in the Aberdeen bestiary with an Aztec account of the horses that accompanied Hernan Cortes in 1519. Addressing their emperor Motecuhzoma, Aztec messengers described the Spanish conquistadors: “Their trappings and arms are all made of iron. They dress in iron and wear iron casques on their heads. Their swords are iron; their bows are iron; their shields are iron; their spears are iron. Their deer carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of a house.”¹⁰ Nahua chroniclers placed accounts of men on horses in between the purely fantastical: “A bird was captured in the lake, and a strange mirror was found on its head. Motecuhzoma looked in the mirror and saw people coming forward on the backs of animals resembling deer. Increasing the people’s fright, monstrous beings were seen in the city, deformed men with two heads.”¹¹ These descriptions are as fantastical as some of the descriptions of faraway animals in European bestiaries. The ass, too, was transformed from an innocuous and lazy animal that existed solely as a docile creature to be exploited into a tool for imperialism: Donkeys (in the form of four jacks and two jennies) arrived in the Americas in 1495 to support Spanish colonies.¹² Just over a century later, these donkeys would be critical to the colonial economy of exploitation as they delivered wood for mining tools and Paraguayan maté herbal tea to Potosí, exchanging them for Peruvian textiles and Spanish manufactures imported via Lima.¹³

It is this fear and apprehension that I hope to transmit in my entry. Through using the lens of indigenous Americans, I transform the horse from the ordinary into the extraordinary. While medieval Europeans would have seen the horse as an everyday companion, Amerindians saw them as beasts, like the whale in Ludwig XV come to life. Through this piece, I hope to question what is seen as normal. What is deemed normal is only normal when viewed through one particular lens. The horse, a faithful companion and symbol of fraternity in Europe, was likely seen as an apocalyptic beast of destruction to 16^th-century Amerindians. To the indigenous peoples of America, they would have been more equivalent to bestiary crocodiles or manticores.

Explanations for some details of this artwork are as follows:

The Chimera
- The scales of the horse are based off the leftmost horse of an artwork by Winfield Coleman. The knight breathes fire, as primary sources indicate that native warriors were stumped by firearms: one account cites several messengers fainting at the sound of cannon fire.¹⁴

_{Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century. Winfield Coleman.}_{As interpreted by the National Museum of the American Indian.}

The Donkey
- Atop the donkey is a cannon. Aztec primary accounts mentions cannon and firearms used by the Spanish—it is incredibly likely that they were pulled by donkeys: even in the 18^th century, donkeys were instrumental to the United States army’s subjugation of the Native American populations of the West.¹⁵

Miscellaneous
- The gold was used in bestiaries such as the Aberdeen bestiary. Colours were informed by bestiaries as well, with the horse taking on an aggressive colour like that of the crocodile in several different bestiaries.

_FOOTNOTES

¹ _{Miguel León-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Beacon Press, 2006), 30.}

² _{Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, BPL 1283 (Herbarius / De medicamentis ex animalibus), folio 56r.}

³ _{Arnamagnæanske Institut, AM 673 a 4º (Icelandic Physiologus), folio 5r.}

⁴ _{Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XV.}

⁵ _{Royal 12 C. XIX, folio 28.}

⁶ _{Paul H Rogers, “Rediscovering the Horse in Medieval French Literature,” Neophilologus 97, no. 4 (2013): 638.}

⁷ _{Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 23r.}

⁸ _{Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 1633 4° (Bestiary of Ann Walsh), folio 25v.}

⁹ _{Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Edited and translated by S. A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and O. Berghof, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 2009. Book 12, chapter 1, section 38.}

¹⁰ _{León-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, 30.}

¹¹ _{León-Portilla, 190.}

¹² _{Peter Mitchell, “New Worlds for the Donkey,” in The Donkey in Human History: An Archaeological Perspective, ed. Peter Mitchell (Oxford University Press, 2018), 189, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198749233.003.0013.}

¹³ _{Mitchell, 212.}

¹⁴ _{León-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, 26.}

¹⁵ _{Mitchell, “New Worlds for the Donkey,”} _210.

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Sea Amphisbaena

CREATIVE PROJECT BY SUN WOO YOON (’23)

Sea Amphisbaena
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO VI}

The Sea Amphisbaena lives in the depths of the ocean. It has a sad and gloomy temperament. It eats little and enjoys wallowing in its pathetic nature. Sometimes it produces a strange, unknown noise. It is born with one head, however it can grow a second one after consuming about three gallons of marine wine. They are often seen kissing one another. They should not be caught and eaten, for they are sacred creatures and their consumption will invite the wrath of God, who will turn you into a refugee.

The Sea Amphisbaena represents the anxious layman. He knows nothing but to ease his pain with drink, self-pity, and masturbation. Who can blame him?

Artist’s Remarks

For my bestiary entry, I wanted to utilize the imaginary quality of bestiary illustrations to depict a mutant creature—something unknown, new, and mysterious. I think the curiosity that inflects the bestiary genre is made profoundly sad when what is being depicted is a curiosity only as a result of violence—I draw inspiration from a two-headed baby shark that was fished up in 2020. Scientists speculate that the radiation runoff from the 3-1-1 disaster, alongside the rising amount of chemical drift infecting our oceans is producing mutant creatures, this sad shark-like thing being one of them.

Shark-like, but not exactly shark. Fish, but not exactly fish.

I tried to combine the bestiary style with my own painting style in the illustration since I still wanted to evoke the traditional bestiary style and its connotations of wonder and narrative. I centered the creature and gave both its faces empty expressions to resist the reader’s impulse to read this creature as either good or bad. I also wanted to evoke the ouroboros, so I arranged the creature in a circular fashion. When two faces are staring at each other instead of one face chasing one tail, the traditional chain is broken—the circular shape is now about a break in a cycle. We could say that climate change and the conditions of the Anthropocene are all about cycles being broken. Cycles being mutated, with uncanny effect.

_{Oil Spill #12}_{, Daniel Beltrá, 2010. Digital chromogenic print, 40″ x 60″.}

The pink sludge in the middle is inspired by Daniel Beltrá’s hauntingly beautiful photographs of oil spills. I wanted to place together connotations of something hazardous and dangerous with something fantastical, as if the oil spill is something like a magical potion found in the bottom of the ocean. Whether magic is good or bad—whether transformation can be positive or negative—is a theme we’ve encountered often throughout the course of the module. The imagined sludge transforms my chosen creature, as the caption reads, “It is born with one head, however it can grow a second one after consuming about three gallons of marine wine.”

My creature’s name appropriates one particular medieval beast: the Amphisbaena. Like my creature, it is two-headed, although it is closer to a lizard than it is to a fish. In addition to its intriguing anatomy, I was struck my some of its descriptions: Pliny the Elder describes: “The amphisbaena has a twin head, that is one at the tail-end as well, as though it were not enough for poison to be poured out of one mouth,” while a couple of other entries mention the creature having a head “in the proper place” and another where its tail would be. Themes of poison, toxicity, (ab)normality, and what is considered “proper” recur.

I particularly explore this idea in the line: “They should not be caught and eaten, for they are sacred creatures and their consumption will invite the wrath of God, who will turn you into a refugee.” The ambiguous genetic mutation that characterizes this fish also makes it special in God’s eyes, and readers do not know whether to pity or admire this creature. I also wanted to frame the creature more explicitly in terms of sacrality, for the uncanny nature it produces but also because I wanted to introduce a religious profanity (eating the fish) to this toxic creature, perhaps obfuscating the “real” reason why one should not consume a two-headed mutant fish.

Around the creature I have chosen to include other hints of transformation and ambiguity that echo that of the creature—I added unnatural, neon coloring to rocks (my take on the plastiglomerate) and placed some jellyfish and plastic bags above the fish. Indeed, I feel my creature is all about a transformation that is happening in a rapidly transforming planet.

The last line of my caption speaks to this: “The Sea Amphisbaena represents the anxious layman. He knows nothing but to ease his pain with drink, self-pity, and masturbation. Who can blame him?” While the fish should still be thought of on its own terms, the fish lends itself as a useful metaphor for painful adaptation—a condition that is afflicting, and will continue to afflict, us all during the Anthropocene, in both physical and mental health. The “anxious layman” is all of us with climate anxiety—all of us who find ourselves feeling nihilistic, unmotivated, afraid, in grief, in shock. My creature is in service of those moments, but also prompts us to wonder: how do we want to lead our lives despite (or perhaps, because of) this crisis?

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Salmon

CREATIVE PROJECT BY DEBORAH JANG

Salmon
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO V}

The salmon is a fish that swims in rivers. The salmon is so named because it leaps out of the water and arcs through the air before plunging back into the depths. By this the salmon grows gossamer wings that enable it to climb waterfalls. In the spring, a mass of salmon all together swim upwards, reversing the flow of streams. Bears wait by the banks of the river, and the salmon jump into their mouths, so that the bears grow fat and lazy without lifting a finger. The bears represent the evils of gluttony, whereby one greedy lord profits from the struggles of the masses.

There is a story in Ireland of a massive salmon with shining silver scales and large eyes. This salmon contained all the world’s knowledge in its body. It is said that whosoever should eat of the salmon would instantly gain the knowledge of all humankind. This salmon represents King Solomon, whose wisdom surpassed that of any man before or after him, as described in the Holy Scriptures: “And God gave to Solomon wisdom, and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, as the sand that is on the sea shore. And the wisdom of Solomon surpassed the wisdom of all the Orientals, and of the Egyptians; And he was wiser than all men” (1 Kings 4:29-31).

And from the wisdom of Solomon this bestiary takes precedent, for “he treated about trees, from the cedar that is in Libanus, unto the hyssop that cometh out of the wall: and he discoursed of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of fishes” (1 Kings 4:33).

Artist’s Remarks

This entry takes inspiration from the Irish mythological tale of the Salmon of Knowledge. It follows the structure of a medieval bestiary entry and shows how these intertwine mythology, fact, and religion.

The art is simple, showing a single salmon floating in the water. I chose to use metallic pens to mimic the gold leaf and precious materials used in expensive bestiaries. (As I emptied my gold pen onto the paper, I felt keenly how much I was spending, similar to how an illuminator may have felt when using up gold leaf.) The color palette is limited, like that of an authentic medieval artist, who must mix their own colors. While I did use a picture of a real salmon as a guide, my art skills are not the best, so my fish still looks different from the original, as do medieval artists’ beasts. My fish even has a somewhat expressive countenance; the word I would use to describe it is “derpy.” The frame of vines mimics that of a formal bestiary illustration, which also has an elaborate frame.

The text entry closely follows the observed structure of the medieval bestiary. It begins with etymology and proceeds to list some basic facts. Next, it delves into an involved, unbelievable story, finally ending all anecdotes with a moral tie-in. After learning that the Aberdeen bestiary followed its entry on peacocks with a Biblical quote and a two-page sermon (“Peacock”), I found it appropriate to expand on this format by adding a final paragraph highlighting another relevant verse from the Vulgate Bible.

According to (“Salmon (n.).”), one possible origin of the English word salmon is from the Latin meaning “leaper” or “to leap.” While this is of dubious origin, all bestiary facts are of dubious origin and it seems fitting that something from Celtic (“Salmon Etymology”) or “folk mythology” (“Salmon (n.).”) should end up in a medieval bestiary that references an Irish myth.

The facts are grounded in actual salmon phenomena; salmon are generally known to jump out of the water, swim upstream, and even jump waterfalls. However, medieval observers would have had little knowledge of how these actions are performed, leading to explanations such as “gossamer wings” that they cannot definitively perceive. Bears, too, are known to eat salmon, and by introducing a predator into the entry, it is clearly seen where a salmon’s place in the hierarchy is: food.

The story of the Salmon of Knowledge has many variants, but can be briefly summarized as follows. The poet Finegas caught the Salmon of Knowledge and had his protege Fionn cook the fish for him. However, the hot fat burned Fionn’s thumb and he sucked his thumb, resulting in all the fish’s knowledge being transferred to him. Fionn then became a great man (“The Salmon of Knowledge”, “Why the Salmon?”). My friend discovered this mythical creature while we were writing a different story, but it is such a good example of an odd mythological story from a similar time period that I found it appropriate to include in the entry. What is striking about this story is that the poet Finegas is not angry with Fionn when Fionn accidentally takes the knowledge he intended to have; instead, he was “happy for” Fionn (“The Salmon of Knowledge”). In so many other tales he might have sought to take revenge, but this story has a happy ending despite its twist.

Both the mention of the bears and the story of the salmon of knowledge culminate in moral lessons. The bear’s lesson, that of the greedy lord who profits without putting in the effort, is both a moral tale cautioning against sloth and a commentary on corruption and power. The salmon of knowledge has parallels to the biblical story of Solomon, principally since both are in possession of the greatest knowledge of the world. Connecting the fish to a biblical story serves to grant it legitimacy. It is a unique mix of religion, mythology, and fact. While a bestiary purports to give facts as well as moral lessons, the nature of a medieval writer’s knowledge of science means that fact and fiction become inextricably intertwined, described by Sarah Kay as “a combination of Christian homiletics and early encyclopedism” (Kay 12). I attempted to replicate this by mixing salmon fact and salmon fiction.

Finally, two passages from the Vulgate Bible (The Vulgate Bible 1 Kings 3) are cited, following the format of many bestiary entries we read in class. The first is a simple reference to Solomon’s wisdom, but the second reflects the purpose of a bestiary. Solomon is said to have knowledge of all plants and animals, displaying how vast his wisdom is. Thus, knowledge of plants and animals serves as shorthand for all knowledge. A bestiary, too, is shorthand for all medieval knowledge, whether of science, religion, or mythology. While it is still committed to spreading good morals and religion, as seen by my entry’s acknowledgement that it “takes [its] precedent” from Solomon’s wisdom, it is nevertheless a surprisingly comprehensive look at the state of medieval knowledge and learning.

_REFERENCES

Kay, Sarah. “Skin, Suture, Caesura.” Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2017, pp. 3–21.

“Peacock.” The Medieval Bestiary, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast257.htm.

“Salmon (n.).” Online Etymology Dictionary, 5 Jan. 2022, https://www.etymonline.com/word/salmon.

“Salmon Etymology.” Etymologeek, https://etymologeek.com/eng/salmon.

“The Salmon of Knowledge.” Irish Myths and Legends, http://www.irelandsmythsandlegends.com/the-salmon-of-knowledge.

The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation. Vulgate.org, https://vulgate.org/ot/1kings_4.htm. “Why the Salmon?” Graduate Student Life, University of Notre Dame, https://gradlife.nd.edu/about/why-the-salmon/.

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Pigeons (of Singapore)

CREATIVE PROJECT BY RACHEL FONG (’25)

Pigeons (of Singapore)
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO IV}

We, the Pigeons of Singapore, pledge to be fully-fledged, unabashed citizens of this country. We are rightful occupants of all spaces under the sun, and there is no corner of this land that any pitiful human can crawl into to avoid us or seek refuge. We move in masses–a marvellous and colourful flurry of vibrant feathers–and by the hundreds, we gradually flock to, and overtake the very spaces people seek to exclude us from. Before their kind constructed obscenely tall towers of concrete, brick and ivory, the skies were vast and clear, and the pigeons were able to take flight without obstruction. It was their poor temperament and envy of our wings that drove humankind to build their own access to the skies, so they could lift their heavy, wingless bodies off the earth. Now, when they trespass into our spaces and position themselves eye-to-eye with us, they become angry with our natural presence. Instead of harbouring hearts of patience and understanding, humans became enraged and sought to drive us away from our homes. Goaded by rage, they placed sheets of metal spears, cast nets, and hung reflective glasses to frighten us away. But these humans, full of ignorance and foolishness, ultimately fail in their aggression. The steadfast pigeons continue to persist and remain, reclaiming the skies.

Artist’s Remarks

My work is intended to be a satirical, contemporary adaptation of the medieval bestiary– with an intention to explore the nuances of human-animal cohabitation in Singapore’s modern urban context. The piece draws from a long history of European literary and visual tradition, and combines taxonomic historical significance with banal, mundane urban experience, thereby producing a work that challenges the ways in which we imagine and interpret inter-species interaction. The concept behind this piece draws from Susan Crane’s Animal Encounters, which explores the notion of cohabitation amidst the long-entrenched binaries of “human” and “animal”. With these two binaries often being pitted against each other, and rooted in an assertion of difference or distinction, there is an obvious source of tension when it comes to co-existence and the inevitable crossing of boundaries. Furthermore, the medium of the medieval bestiary is inherently rooted in humanist traditions, where it is humanity that is responsible for, and yields narrative power over, the taxonomic classification of the animal kingdom. My work thus aims to probe the human-centricity of everyday existence in the contemporary context, and to disrupt anthropocentric hierarchies through the use of parody and role-reversal.

At first glance, the piece resembles a traditional bestiary entry and adheres to the typical visual composition – with an intricate, coloured border that frames a dual panel. I chose to use an opulent gold foil background, reminiscent of the illuminations in the Aberdeen bestiary, which notably contrasts with the banality of the subject overlaid on it. The entry depicts the all-too-familiar “pigeon problem” in urban Singapore, where the birds have been widely considered to be disease-carrying pests that are invading human homes and spaces. Symbolically, this points to a juxtaposition of a formal, historical tradition of illumination with a more informal, everyday experience. I chose to depict two scenes in the dual-panel bestiary entry–the first reveals the invasiveness of the pigeons in urban residential areas, and the second shows the various human interventions and measures that have been taken to keep pigeons out of urban spaces.

The composition of the first panel points to the division of space–between the urban interior, and the natural exterior, demonstrating the building tensions between human and animals as they encroach on each other’s spaces. A solid clear line through the middle of the panel separates the built environment from the natural environment. Human space is represented by the common local flats on the right side of the panel–with mechanisms of modern urban life such as the electric lamp and the laundry poles on the exterior of the building–while animal space is marked by the presence of trees and suggestions of clear skies through the use of negative space on the left. This is evocative of the power dynamic often reflected by bestiary entries that places the human and the animal on opposing sides. Notably, this panel also points to the transgression of these physical boundaries between humans and animals, firstly suggested by the subtle visual crossing of the middle line by the tip of the pigeon wing and the human hand. Moreover, the pigeon droppings on the flats and hung laundry represent the invasiveness of the pigeons as they encroach on human spaces. Medieval bestiaries also often suggest a hierarchy that positions humanity in a place of power, superior to the animals, through the common two-finger hand gesture of appointment, such as that embodied by Adam as he names the animals, a gesture that signifies control over the natural world. My piece also sought to appropriate this gesture by transforming it to one of irritation and inconvenience–a stern, scolding gesture rather than that suggesting control.

The hostility between human and animal is furthered in the second panel, which positions the human and animal in conflict through visual disorder. Typical human-invented contraptions intended to drive pigeons away from urban spaces are depicted, such as metal spikes that often line railings and buildings to prevent the birds from landing, mesh nettings to prevent them from flying into certain areas, and reflective discs to scare them away. In contrast to the panel above, the lower panel dispenses with a formal visual order and organisation in its composition, which serves to ascribe a degree of chaos and hostility between human interventions and the natural world. However, as opposed to the valorisation of human abilities and technology that is usually reflected in the bestiary entries, the enduring presence of multiple pigeons, as well as their droppings, suggests that humans have ultimately failed to assert dominance over the natural world.

The visual component of the bestiary entry is paired with an accompanying text, which aims to further subvert the typical power dynamic in human-animal relations. Texts that accompany bestiary illuminations are oftentimes extractive, where the animal is portrayed as a symbol of anti-humanness and is therefore used in the anthropocentric endeavour to celebrate and elevate “human exceptionalism” (Crane, 4). Instead of an anthropomorphic perspective and human control of the narrative, which often subjects animals to an inferior status through the use of parables intended to admonish poor behaviour, I chose to actively reverse this by lending a voice to the humble pigeon. By allowing the animal to gain narrative control, I seek to challenge the way knowledge is formed and transmitted, and to communicate a different perspective that is situated in opposition to humanist tendencies. In my text, the pigeon asserts its species as “marvellous”, while humans are rendered in negative terms such as “ignorant” and “foolish” for attempting to assert dominance over a natural world that can perhaps never be fully domesticated. Additionally, the first line of the text parodies the Singapore Pledge, which subtly weaves the language of citizenship and belonging in the discourse of space and who, or what, has the right to it. Human efforts to exclude nature from urban areas are portrayed as an outright refusal to peacefully coexist with animals, and their interventions ultimately prove to be futile. Thus, my work gives a degree of intellectual agency to the figure of the pigeon, which challenges humanist perspectives and evokes a sense of respect, and perhaps even begrudging admiration, for the persistence of the animal in spite of human efforts to exclude them.

_REFERENCES

Crane, S. (2013). In Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (pp. 1–9). Introduction, PENN University of Pennsylvania Press.

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Panda

CREATIVE PROJECT BY JODY LIM (’25)

Panda
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO III}

The panda, called bear-cat in Cathay, is closer to man than cat. It is a giant black and white beast with six-fingered hands. Instead of meat, it devours trees and its presence can be indicated by the crashes of falling trees. The panda gives birth to twin pure black cubs and must paint them white. When the mother panda runs out of paint, she leaves them black and white. She is impatient and has no foresight. She disgracefully tries to become what she is not. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10) Thus, her dissatisfaction will never be sated, for her and her cow-like spawn. As punishment, she sleeps but can never rest and her eyes grow larger and darker with fatigue.

Artist’s Remarks

I chose the panda as it was an Asian animal that medieval Europeans would have never seen. Indeed, knowledge of pandas was only introduced to Europeans when a Vincentian missionary, Armand David, came across panda furs in 1869¹. Thus, the panda was reminiscent of the bestiaries of real-life African animals like the elephant and crocodile. I wanted to try and reimagine the panda according to the traits that would stand out to a medieval European. I tried to make the description of such an animal seem mystical and uncanny.

The first sentence was an intentional way to set up the exploratory and mystical tone. The first sentence stated “The panda, called bear-cat in Cathay, is closer to man than cat.” First, I wanted to add an element of foreignness through the translation, which is usually from classical languages like Latin or Greek, as seen in the Ape, Elephant, and Tiger bestiary entries. Since the panda is from China, I decided to make use of its original name xiong mao (熊猫), which translates literally to bear-cat. For China, I decided to call it by its medieval name, Cathay². However, I wanted to lean into a panda’s similarity to humans which this translation did not cater to. Thus, I also made a point of pulling away from the original translation and highlighting the panda’s perceived similarity to humans.

I described the panda as more human-like to break down the animal-human boundary, which is an element I particularly liked in the bestiaries we studied in class. I recently learnt about pandas’ opposable thumbs, which inspired me to focus on its hands³. I thought it might be interesting to think about an animal’s morphological similarities to us, such as the panda being able to pick up bamboo, while being startlingly different — having paws and the thumb being the sixth “finger”. Thus, I highlighted this in its description, referring to its paws as “hands”. I tried to be more intentional in the first illumination of the panda by recolouring a bestiary of a bear while adding on detailed six-fingered hands, with knuckles and fingernails. In the second illumination, I also depicted it holding a paintbrush while sitting down. This action was human-like and could very well be of a man painting as well. Thus, this illumination further served to interrogate what it means to be human. Overall, the panda was depicted as extremely close to humans, both in certain physical features and in behaviour.

Next, I tried to reinterpret bamboo as a food source for pandas. Bamboo would be a foreign plant to medieval Europe and I thought trees would be a good proxy for them. This is also interpreted in the illumination through the panda licking the tree stump.

Then, I included a short story about a mother panda and her painted cubs as the author’s primary method of distancing pandas from humans. Her cubs were born pure-black, giving them a visual difference from a white medieval European infant. The mother tried to make them more human-like through painting them white. However, she ran out of paint and the narrative denounced her as “impatient” and having “no foresight”. The emphasis on her bad character seemed to suggest that her negative traits are the ones keeping her and her young from this elevated pseudo-human state. Thus, humans were implicitly placed on the pedestal again even though they were born human. The illumination went one step further in highlighting the panda’s negative traits, and painting the mother panda as being neglectful. Abandoning and turned away from her half-painted cub, she started painting another. Thus, this depiction further condemned the panda.

Going further into the distancing tactics, I placed the Ephesians 2:10 bible quote for another angle of distancing the human from the animal, through reaffirming their biological difference. The panda was “disgraceful” in her attempts to uplift her offspring beyond their biological form and the narrative denounced them as “cow-like spawn”. This suggests that the panda should just be happy in her station in life.

However, a sense of unresolved dissonance was created through these paradoxical distancing techniques. On one hand, the mother panda was vilified for being unable to fully paint her children. On the other hand, the narrator believed one’s physical body to be unchangeable, while modifying the panda’s eyes as punishment. The very existence of the panda as a black and white animal, in fact, reflected a change of one’s physical form. To me, this description was motivated by the almost haphazard way that bestiary writers try to differentiate humanity and animals.

I was heavily inspired by the bestiary of a bear in both my text and my illumination. Firstly, my first illumination is a recoloured and modified version of the Aberdeen bear bestiary⁴. I kept to the colour scheme of the Aberdeen bestiaries of blues, browns, and golds. As such, the pandas were recoloured as dark blue despite being described as black. Next, the illumination of the bear focused on how the mother bear would lick its young into shape and I wanted to call back to that in my bestiary of a panda bear⁵. It would not be a stretch to imagine medieval Europeans taking similar inspiration from their knowledge of bears to make sense of a foreign animal like a panda.

_FOOTNOTES

¹ _{“Giant Panda,” Britannica, accessed February 13, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/animal/giant-panda#ref280131}

² _{“Cathay,” Britannica, accessed February 13, 2023https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathay-medieval-region-China}

³ _{Britannica, “Giant Panda.”}

⁴ _{“Gallery: Bear,” The Medieval Bestiary, accessed February 12, 2023, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery171.htm}

⁵ _{“Bear,” The Medieval Bestiary, accessed February 12, 2023, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast171.htm}

_REFERENCES

Britannica. “Cathay.” https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathay-medieval-region-China. Accessed February 13, 2023.

Britannica. “Giant Panda.” https://www.britannica.com/animal/giant-panda#ref280131.

Accessed February 13, 2023.

The Medieval Bestiary. “Bear.” https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast171.htm. Accessed February 12, 2023.

The Medieval Bestiary. “Gallery: Bear.” https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery171.htm. Accessed February 12, 2023.

July 1, 2023July 4, 2023

Deer

CREATIVE PROJECT BY TAMANE HARATA (’24)

Deer
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO II}

There is an animal that is called deer, known for its swiftness, the delicacy of its limbs, and especially its marvelous horns, for so the Greeks named it keraós. While it is commonly assumed that deer are fearful prey, they are extremely keen observers from both close and long distances. Deer can be found camouflaging themselves amongst the naked branches of autumn and winter, or even proudly making appearances in the middle of one’s backyard. Deer seem fearful, yet through both camouflage and public appearance, their gaze will be directed towards us, in other words, Mankind.

No matter how well they hide themselves amongst the woods in one’s garden and no matter how far away they may be, Man feels exposed under those black eyes. Man might be tempted to draw the curtains to avoid their gaze, yet their appearances in his own territory fascinates him enough to forget such an option. The sight of their horns and delicate body provokes Man’s inexplicable desire to keep looking at them, while being tormented that he is under watch. The immense glass window of his living room separating his world from their fluctuating territory appears nonexistent in such turmoiled truth. This is especially a constant reminder for a Buddhist Man that no matter how well concealed his evil deeds seem, the Heavens are looking over what he does.

There is a saying in Japanese Buddhist traditions, that when Man hides himself in the shade for a long time and hopes to remain in darkness forever, it is only a matter of time until the sun will eradicate the entirety of the shade and expose this Man to the world. This is because the Heavens see through the shade and know the right time to expose him. When one walks around an immense statue of the Buddha in Nara, he will realize the statue’s gaze always follows wherever he goes. The gaze of the deer resembles this. Whether Man encounters deer in a backyard, or within the peripheries of the Buddhist temples in Nara where they follow humans around, their silent gaze will reinforce Man’s awareness of being watched by the Heavens and of the consequences of his attempt to get away with whatever scheme he plans to do. That is perhaps the reason why Man feels tormented under the watch of those deer, becoming overly conscious of what he is doing even if it is not necessarily a bad deed. Man may sometimes wonder why he questions the judgements in the deer’s eyes, for they may only be blankly gazing at him without the knowledge of right and wrong. However, the Buddhist reminder and saying are so powerful that Man cannot make himself indifferent towards the deer looking at him, nor even prevent himself from looking at them in return.

Artist’s Remarks

This is a modern reimagination of a bestiary entry regarding deer from a 21^st-century teenager’s perspective. It aims to follow the basic structure of the bestiary, starting from a very brief overview of the animal and the etymology of its name, then elaborating on certain possible tales involving the animal, and finally diving into the religious and moral implications of the animal’s characteristics that are in focus within the entry. In this entry, I chose to develop the underlying concept of the gaze from my own experience with deer. I often encountered them as a teenager inside the backyard garden of our house in Ithaca, New York, as well as in every corner of the city of Nara in Japan. The adolescent perspective of this bestiary entry derives not only from the fact that I was twelve or thirteen when making these observations about deer, but also because I wished to shrink the gap between medieval bestiary entries and my own by refraining from conceptualizing deer in a scientific manner, and instead elaborating on genuine observations the way medieval records seem to convey.

Here, because the most striking thing I noticed about deer in the garden and in Nara was the way they would intensely gaze at humans, I aimed to entangle Derrida’s notion of the “consciousness of being naked” and the knowledge of “[being] seen and seen naked, before even seeing [oneself] seen by [an animal]” (11) with Buddhist sayings about Buddha’s constant gaze. I specifically chose the Buddhist perspective mainly because my teenage self was a Buddhist and the deer found in Nara mostly spend their time inside the confines of Buddhist temples. I have modified the nakedness portion of Derrida’s arguments into a more moral concept because I thought that the preoccupation with Buddha’s gaze strongly resembles the pattern of Derrida’s description of shame and preoccupation with being gazed at by an animal and seeing oneself being seen by that animal. As the latter resonates with “Man’s awareness of being watched by the Heavens” mentioned in my entry, I shall also point out that deer found in Nara’s temples tend to stare at and interact with passers-by very frequently. It is thus said that they serve Buddha in watching over the visitors’ deeds. With this connection between animal gaze (deer gaze) and Buddha’s gaze, I believed this seemed to fit the medieval bestiary entry’s pattern of elaborating on the religious and moral implications or symbolisms of the animal being described. This is where I decided to make a more contemporary entry and transcend European boundaries by shifting to the viewpoint of Buddhist morals rather than merely reiterating the religious and moral connotations of deer in a medieval European context.

For instance, I was able to relate with Derrida’s description of shame under an animal gaze: I felt ashamed to be seen by a deer when I was playing video games rather than doing homework and also ashamed of being ashamed. At that time, because I obviously had not read the Derrida piece, I connected this experience of shame with the Buddhist saying in my bestiary that my family often refers to (especially when I hide the fact that I was avoiding studying…).

As for the visual image, this photograph consists of a picture I took myself in the backyard from our home in Ithaca. Rather than drawing a deer, I chose to incorporate this photograph as I wanted to preserve the medium of photography that connotes a more modern approach to a bestiary entry. Moreover, I found that the deer’s brown color fuses especially well into the color of the branches and the dead leaves, so much so that its black eyes stand out quite strikingly and draw our attention straight towards those eyes. This led me to think of the line “Man’s inexplicable desire to keep looking at them” in my entry and the following paradox that had left me disturbed for a long time: despite the shame and awkwardness in being stared at so intensely for a prolonged period, their wildness and alterity still urge us to meet their gaze and find ourselves in wonder, as though calling forth Derrida’s questioning of “Who was born first, before the names? Which one saw the other come to this place, so long ago?” (18).

_REFERENCES

Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I am. 2006

July 1, 2023July 6, 2023

Capricornus-Xuanwu

CREATIVE PROJECT BY TOH HONG JIN (’23)

Capricornus-Xuanwu
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

^{THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY}
^{FOLIO I}

The Capricornus-Xuanwu is a hybrid celestial beast of the northern summer skies and southern winter skies. Beheld in the west, it takes the shape of a goat with fish tail, coiling as a serpent round the form of a black monstrous turtle beheld in the east. The Xuanwu turtle is half-lion, half-dragon, half-snake, a fierce and mysterious guardian of the north with the power of water. The sea-goat shares this affinity, but it is also endowed with the abundance of earth, of which the infant Zeus once suckled upon through the horns. It is a confused creature at war with itself always, but alas, such is also the nature of the world.

Artist’s Remarks

Having encountered many fantastic creatures in various medieval manuscripts, I endeavoured to look beyond to the illusory beasts in the heavens for this creative bestiary entry. Completed with pencil and ink on Bristol paper, the Capricornus-Xuanwu is an imaginary composite creature comprised of the Capricorn from Mesopotamian and Western cultures, and the Xuanwu (玄武) from East Asian culture. The main reason for bringing these existing creatures together into one is their shared position in the night sky—both are represented as constellations with some common stars, and while the bestial forms which these stars have gone on to take may initially seem extremely different, a closer look at some of the tales and accounts of their traits and symbolism reveals surprising parallels between them. This is also an exercise after the medieval bestiary’s tradition of including animals and creatures from drastically distinct cultures and locales, including attempting to synthesise accounts from their place of origin with prevalent medieval beliefs and doctrines.

The Capricornus, or Capricorn, is well-known as an earth-affiliated, cardinal zodiac sign in astrology and as a triangular-shaped constellation in astronomy since classical antiquity and is most represented as a sea-goat, or a goat and fish hybrid creature. The Babylonians saw it as a symbol of Enki (later known as Ea), the Sumerian god of water, knowledge, crafts, fertility, magic, and creation, who has been depicted with long-horned water buffaloes, a horned crown, and sometimes as a man covered with fish scales. In the Greek and Roman imagination of a sea-goat figure, Capricornus was sometimes confused with Amalthea, the female goat that suckled the infant Zeus after he was saved from his Titan father, and her horn was notably transformed into the cornucopia, or “horn of plenty”; the sea-goat was also sometimes identified as the Greek god Pan, a satyr-like figure that escaped the monster Typhon by diving into the river, causing the bottom half of his body to turn into a fish tail.

In this bestiary entry, the Capricornus is represented faithfully on the bottom left of the framed drawing, with a notable change only in the positioning of its tail. Instead of having it spiral downward and its tail emerge from the back (as seen in Fig. 1), I have decided to draw it such that the entire creature bears closer resemblance to the symbol that denotes it, which I have also included on the top left corner. The symbol has always looked like a pictogram of Capricornus to me, with its “V” shape resembling the sea-goat’s horns and the twirled “S”-like segment resembling its fish tail. The single major change to Capricornus in this depiction is in its tail, which does not end anywhere near its body, nor does its literal end look like a fish’s. Instead, I chose to conflate its scaly tail with the equally scaly body of a serpent, which extends and wraps around the Xuanwu turtle, tying the two creatures together, the reason for which I shall return to shortly. Following the tradition of the medieval bestiary’s inclusion of geometric shapes in their visuals, I have drawn some of the stars that make up the Capricornus constellation in the background. In addition, to emulate the medieval bestiary’s tendency to bring in both divine and strangely contradictory accounts, I have incorporated in the text Capricornus’ mistaken relation with Amalthea and located its astrological elemental affinity of earth in Amalthea’s cornucopia.

_{Fig. 1: Capricornus. Image taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica.}

The Xuanwu turtle, also known as Genbu in Japanese, Hyeon-mu in Korean, and Huyền Vũ in Vietnamese, is both a god in Chinese religion and, as Black Turtle / Tortoise, one of the Four Symbols of Chinese constellations. The Black Turtle is also one of the Four Auspicious Beasts in Chinese culture, alongside the Azure Dragon, Vermillion Bird, and White Tiger, and it represents the element of water, the cardinal direction north, and the season of winter. Its name literally translates into “Black / Dark / Mysterious Warrior”. The Xuanwu turtle is associated with longevity, as are many other turtle-like creatures in Chinese mythology that then blur together into a single entity, such as Ao—a giant turtle whose legs were used by the Chinese mother goddess Nüwa as pillars to support the skies, and Bixi—a dragon with a turtle shell that tends to be used a decorative plinth for commemorative and funeral steles. This figure is frequently depicted not just as the Black Turtle but also one entwined by a snake, both of which represent the god Xuanwu’s stomach and intestines respectively, which according to legend, were dug out by him to be washed free of sins. After Xuanwu became a deity, his stomach and intestines turned into the aforementioned creatures. These demonic beasts caused such widespread harm that the god Xuanwu had to subdue them, and upon doing so they turned into the god’s subordinates and in a way, his iconography as well.

In the bestiary entry, Xuanwu’s name in Chinese characters is included on the top left corner of the framed drawing as well, oriented from right to left and written in the style of the Chinese seal script. The creature itself is portrayed on the right portion of the frame, upright and interlocked with a serpent, now a part of the Capricornus’ fish tail. The reason for this is to highlight their common hybrid nature and elemental affinity. The Black Turtle itself is drawn with a great degree of artistic license, since it has often been a hybrid of the turtle with various monstrous animals like the dragon and snake. The choice of making it half-lion is in large part due to my being inspired by the lion turtle creature (see Fig. 2) in a popular animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was itself inspired by the Xuanwu and likely its physical proximity as a stone statue and guardian to the stone lions also found protecting ancient Chinese temples and palaces. The regal and divine fusion of the dragon, lion, snake, and turtle also seeks to invoke the distant but nonetheless interesting resemblance to the French mythological creature of Tarasque, said to have been tamed by Saint Martha, which would geographically draw the Xuanwu closer to the cultures that inspired its astronomical counterpart of Capricornus.

_{Fig. 2: Lion Turtle. Image taken from Avatar: The Last Airbender Wiki.}

Overall, this bestiary entry manuscript page presents a juxtaposition of Western and Eastern cultures through their two fantastic beasts and associated legends and symbolisms, based upon how they gazed, imagined, and projected their values and beliefs onto the same part of the night sky. Yet this juxtaposition only reveals that the opposition between the West and East is in fact much more unstable than it seems, with many parallels and similarities amidst their apparent differences. This unsettling of binaries is also prominently invoked through the similar hybridity inherent to these beasts. They may ultimately just be illusory creatures, but taken as one, their boundary-transgressing natures very much highlight the limits and transience of human meaning-making and categorisations.