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Full Description
When one thinks about medieval animals, snails rarely come to mind. Just as history has long had its biases, so has the study of animals - both have long focused on the 'crowned heads'. A focus on the seemingly insignificant, on the small and the frail, offers a fresh point of view. This book studies the uses and representations of medieval snails, spanning material culture, medicine and gastronomy as well as a great variety of texts and images - taking into consideration bestiaries, sermons, poems and insults, as well as marginalia, sculpture, paintings and painted ceilings. Observing the Middle Ages from the viewpoint of a snail can be surprising, and lead us to delve into material everyday life as well as the core of culture-building. This study concludes with a novel reading of the famed 'snail-combat motif', in which a knight cowers faced with a ferocious mollusc, making a connection between Gothic marginalia and a new, most malleable cultural expression: the meme.
Contents
Preface
List of illustrations
Introduction
1 - What is a snail? A slippery scope
2 - Concrete uses: waste not, want not - from frugality to luxury
3 - Snails in texts: meanings most malleable
4 - Snails in visual art: devil in the detail
5 - Molluscs in Marginalia: the snail-combat motif
6 - Success and posterity: introducing the "Memedieval"
Conclusion
Bibliography
Endnotes
