The representation of animals and the natural world in late-medieval hagiography and romance

This thesis takes as its subject the representation of animals and the natural world in two key genres of medieval literature: hagiography and romance. Focusing on the early Lives of St. Francis of Assisi, the romances Sir Gowther, Octavian, and Sir Orfeo, the Middle English Alexander Romances, and the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo, it examines the diverse ways in which animals are portrayed in these texts, and the range of mimetic, symbolic, and representative functions that they fulfil. Rather than endorsing the view that medieval culture was characterised by a unified and homogenous attitude towards nature and the natural, the thesis draws out the diversity of opinion and outlook evident in the imaginative literature of the period, and demonstrates in detail the crucial role of genre in determining the representative strategies of individual texts.