Abstract

VALENTINI, Carlos  and  RISTORTO, Marcela. Medieval Bestiaries and Social Imaginary. Scripta Mediaevalia [online]. 2015, vol.8, n.1. ISSN 1851-8753.

Medievalists are concentrated, at present, to discover and analyse the system of values, beliefs and feelings of men and women of that time, the way the world and the spirit is represented a society for which the invisible deserved much interest as the visible. The Bestiary were considered in his day natural history books and their authors attempted to give scientific characteristics, but by giving them a moralizing tone, go to the legends and appeal to the most improbable and fantastic animals conceived by medieval man, became part of «aquel dominio de lo maravilloso donde se expresa el imaginario de una época». Therefore, when using allegory as expressive privileged process and seek to educate consciences in the rules of the Christianity, if alleged scientific texts became one of the most striking pages of medieval literature. They weigh more allegorical described assessment of the accuracy of the descriptions creatures. The didactic literature was one of the mechanisms used to ensure adherence to the Christian ideal. The authors of the Bestiary used the description of the beasts as the basis of an allegorical teaching. Thus, while some animals represented Christ, others symbolized evil or became projection of human vices and defects. This study aims to analyze the literary representation of some of these animals as an expression of imagination of an era.

Keywords : Didactic Literature; Bestiary; Ideology; Social Imaginary.

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