A countess as goat and a duke as boar: Animal stories as political commentary

Abstract

This article studies three medieval texts in which specific historical persons are presented as animals to comment upon their behaviour and on the situation they were in. The choice of representing animals is studied, as are the literary techniques and the meaning of the texts. It is argued that this meaning is always general, and older scholarly interpretations, that are more specific, are rejected. An explanation is suggested for the rarity of this type of ‘animal story as political commentary’, and it is argued that this type is fundamentally different from the passages in traditional animal stories which have previously been assumed also to contain veiled political commentary.