On writing animals in classical literature
Creators: name: MacCormack, Colin
Publisher: name: The University of Texas at Austin
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Classics
subject: Roman literature
subject: Greek literature
subject: Animal studies
subject: Posthumanism
subject: Animals in literature
subject: Greek literature--Themes, motives
subject: Latin literature--Themes, motives
subject: Anthropomorphism in literature
subject: Philosophy, Ancient

description: This dissertation examines animals in Greek and Roman literature and the use of zoological knowledge in poetic and non-technical works. While not quite so rigorous as to be called ‘animal science’, the accumulation of a vast body of knowledge pertaining to animals’ lives and behaviors found in Greek and Latin writing belonged to a ‘zoological culture’ which permeated Greco-Roman thought. This zoological culture was one in which animals and knowledge about them were both elements with which to think, devices authors could use to develop aesthetics, characters or themes, as well as the subjects of poetic attention themselves. I approach animals, zoology and zoological culture in Greek and Latin literature through a series of case studies. While by no means an exhaustive survey of animals in Greco-Roman thought, they demonstrate the range of ways authors could incorporate zoological knowledge into their work and their underlying motivations. The Introduction introduces the theoretical frameworks of animal studies and posthumanism informing my analyses as well as a preliminary case study: Herodotus’ Histories. Incorporating both symbolic usages of animals as well as specific pieces of zoological knowledge into his historical investigation, Herodotus presents one of the earliest cases of technical zoological learning integrated into non-technical literature. The focus of each core chapter moves from more animalizing to more humanized depictions of animals. In Part I, animals appear primarily as things to be avoided, killed or consumed. Chapter 1 focuses on depictions of venomous serpents by Nicander and Lucan, where information about snakes and their venom creates dark, terrifying worlds in conflict with other poetic or philosophical views of nature. Chapter 2 pivots to fish and how knowledge could both reinforce animal objectification as well as push against it. This tension of understanding aquatic species as both itemized, consumable products as well as creatures capable of intelligence, compassion and other virtues is developed most fully in Oppian’s Halieutica. Part II turns to animals presented as resembling or even equivalent to people. Chapter 3 explores the relation of human and animal first through the qualities by which they were distinguished, chiefly speech and reason, and then through the tradition of anthropomorphism in fables and the poetry of Homer and Vergil. Continuing these themes, Chapter 4 focuses on works which reposition the animal in literary imagination. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the recurring motif of transformed individuals being unable to communicate their human intelligence implies a possibility of an ignored likeness between human and animal experience, a notion made explicit in Pythagoras’ speech and again in Ovid’s Fasti. Relatedly, Pseudo-Oppian’s Cynegetica presents animals as fully realized poetic subjects, bearing all the trappings and even speech of epic and tragic characters. I conclude that while knowledge about animals facilitated serious consideration of their lives and subjectivity, it was also largely informed by an anthropocentric worldview which evaluated them by an ultimately human metric.