Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-329) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Minding animals with anthropomorphism -- Deploying the animal in medieval miracles, bestiaries, and fables -- Exploiting the animal through hunting and husbandry -- Describing the animal in New World habitats -- Embodying animals : Cervantes and animal cognition -- Epilogue: Minding animals after Cervantes.
Summary:
"Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds employs current research in cognitive science and the philosophy of animal cognition to explore how humans have understood non-human animals in the Iberian world, from the Middle Ages through the Early Modern period. Using texts from European and Indigenously-informed sources, Steven Wagschal argues that people tend to conceptualize the minds of animals in ways that reflect their own uses for the animal, the manner in which they interact with the animal, and the place in which the animal lives. Often this has little if anything to do with the actual cognitive abilities of the animal. However, occasionally early authors made surprisingly accurate assumptions about the thoughts and feelings of animals."-- Provided by publisher. "Wagschal explores a number of ways in which culture and human cognition interact, including: the utility of anthropomorphism; the symbolic use of animals in medieval Christian texts; attempts at understanding the minds of animals in Spain's early modern farming and hunting books; the effect of novelty on animal conceptualizations in 'New World' histories, and how Cervantes navigated the forms of anthropomorphism that preceded him to create the first embodied animal minds in fiction."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.