Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture by Karen Raber (review)

Karen Raber analyses early modern representations of animal bodies. In the Introduction, she challenges the notion of human superiority. Her chief concern is the dismissal of how animals have shaped human society and culture in that they are inseparable.

Chapter 1 examines the anatomies of horses in Carlo Ruini’s Anatomia del cavallo, infermità e suoi rimedii (1598) and Andrew Snape’s Anatomy of an Horse (1683). It identifies the influence of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543) on Ruini and Snape. Raber notes the importance of a monkey, dog, and goat in the frontispiece of Vesalius’s Fabrica. Although the animals are marginalised in the frontispiece, Raber argues that their presence indicates the human reliance on animals to articulate a sense of superiority. This implication is taken a stage further when Raber examines the lavish illustrations of horse anatomies in Ruini and Snape. Rather than being regarded as a beast, the horse is revered as a noble animal and anthropomorphised for its fearless strength. The horse and its human rider are fused into an invincible warrior.

Raber assesses the early modern fascination with centaurs in Chapter 2. By analysing the literature of Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, John Donne, and Edmund Spenser, she gives an insight into the Renaissance fear of humans degenerating into beasts. She also reveals how horses signify the early modern need to regulate bodily passions. The chapter then addresses a more intimate connection between humans and horses. Raber clearly states that this intimacy is not simply sexual, but gives a feeling of completeness when a human is riding a horse. In early modern training manuals, Raber discovers how humans and horses communicate with each other through the bodily movements articulated in the act of riding.

In Chapter 3, Raber explores the rather distasteful early modern habit of consuming horses’ urine, excrement, and internal organs. She reads Hamlet as a play ‘about parasitism’ or the interplay between human and animal in terms of who is consuming and living off whom (p. 111). The presence of worms and other internal pests in early modern human and animal bodies maintains Hamlet’s obsession with death and decay.

Chapter 4 sees a shift in focus as Raber concentrates on how human and animal bodies interact in the architecture of urban and rural spaces. Yet she also notes how animals have no regard for human boundaries. In her analysis of how bees, ants, spiders, and birds construct architecture, Raber notes how they influenced the early modern notion of the home. She also acknowledges how keeping a pet transforms the home into a cosy domestic space. The chapter ends with a fascinating discussion of Romeo and Juliet in terms of cats and dogs. Raber notes how in early modern literature, cats ‘are universally understood to be female’ (p. 148). Dogs indicate bestial behaviour. The brawls in the play’s open spaces of the street and square indicate an ‘infestation of violent creatures’ (p. 149). Yet the enclosed private spaces of the garden, marital chamber, and tomb signify a quiet rational retreat.

Raber turns her attention to moles and sheep in Chapter 5. She notes how the mole that works the soil from underneath conflicts with the farmer who labours above it. Yet the mole that is blind to notions of boundaries and property ownership makes humans blind to its intimidating underground world. The chapter then turns to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, where Raber argues how sheep are depicted ‘as dangerous animals’ rather than innocent, docile beasts (p. 161). The sheep’s habit of endlessly eating grass turns them into cannibals, as crops to feed humans cannot be grown on the land. They also need less human labour to be maintained than a whole field of crops.

In the Conclusion and with reference to More’s Utopia, Raber states the importance of how human culture cannot be removed from its ‘experience of embodiment’ with animals (p. 179). Even...