Week 8: Physiologus. Background | Background Quiz | Starting Assumptions | Resources | Extras Vocabulary | Etymology | Grammar | Perseus Dictionary | Perseus Tool Reading Overview | Reading Quiz: English | Reading Quiz: Latin Discussion Questions | Latin Composition | Weekly Checklist

Additional Recommended Reading

You might want to start by taking a look at the Supplementary Pages for this week...

... and you will also find many other resources online:

Medieval bestiaries:

• The entire Latin text, with illustrations and English translation, is available at the Aberdeen Bestiary site.
• "Medieval Bestiaries and the Birth of Zoology," by Aura Beckhöfer-Fialho is an interesting collection of materials available online.

The encyclopedic tradition:

• You can find some of Aristotle's texts on the animals at the MIT Classics Internet Archive. Unfortunately, this site suffered a severe failure and many of the longer texts have been arbitrarily truncated -- so be careful, some of the chapters of the books of Aristotle wihch are presented here in English are not complete and break off abruptly at the bottom of the page.
• How about Pliny's Natural History? Yes: here it is, in all its glory: at the Lacus Curtius website. (Latin only).
• Isidore: go figure. There should be a complete Etymologiae of Isidore on the internet, but there is not. You can find selected books from the Etymologiae at the Ad Fontes Latin Library website (Latin only), but the animal books are not available online (anywhere that I know of!).
• Remember our friend Hrabanus from last week? Of course he wrote about the animals too: you can read the Book VIII of Hrabanus's encyclopedia online (Latin only).
• Here's a modern encyclopedia online: Encyclopedia Mythica has a Bestiary section!

Allegories and animals:

• THE SCRIPTURE ALPHABET OF ANIMALS by Harriet Cook, published in 1842, is online at CCEL.
• Animals in the Bible, a very lengthy article in the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Symbols in Christian Art and Architecture
• Christian Legends and Symbols: The Bestiary