with the result that they—and wild animals as well—were notoriously liable to prosecution and punishment in European courts of law.13 As Keith Thomas has observed, “In the towns of the early modern period, animals were everywhere…. Dwelling in such proximity to men, these animals were often thought of as individuals…. Shepherds knew the faces of their sheep as well as those of their neighbors…. [D]omestic beasts…were…frequently spoken to, for their owners, unlike Cartesian intellectuals, never thought them incapable of understanding” (Man 95–96). To neglect this aspect of early modern life is not only to misunderstand the nature of early modern animals; it is also to misunderstand the nature of early modern personhood.
Of the animal characters studied in the following chapters, some have been endowed by their creators with a semblance of inner life: for instance, Lodovico Ariosto's Baiardo, William Baldwin's Mouse-slayer, John Skelton's Parrot, Jean Lemaire de Belges's Amant Vert, and Tybert from The History of Reynard the Fox. Others, such as the theatrical sheep of Middleton and Shakespeare and The Second Shepherds’ Pageant (c. 1475), seem innocent of in-teriority. In one instance—the “Cherubic shapes” that motivate “The Chariot of Paternal Deitie” in Milton's Paradise Lost (6.753, 750)—we seem to encounter an amalgam of animal and divinity whose consciousness transcends not just the human but species distinction of any sort. In every case, however, we meet with figures that speak to the nature of personhood, that provide models for significant behavior across the species boundary, and that attest in the process to the interrelation of the human and the nonhuman.
In pointing this out, I do not seek to make broad claims for the politically or ethically ameliorative power of this book. I agree with Cary Wolfe that “there is no longer any good reason to take it for granted that the theoretical, ethical, and political question of the subject is automatically coterminous with the species distinction between Homo sapiens and everything else” (1). However, I see no reason to claim that this book therefore helps detach “a properly postmodern pluralism from the concept of the human with which progressive political and ethical agendas have traditionally been associated,” or, more grandly, that it offers “a posthumanist and transdisci-plinary theory of the relation between…species, ethics, and language, conceived in its exteriority and materiality” (9, 11). While I sympathize with these objectives, I cannot help tempering them with the comic realism of David Lodge, one of whose fictional characters exclaims that the rituals of academic discourse have “no point,…[i]f by point you mean the hope of arriving at some certain truth…. [W]hen did you ever discover that in a question-and-discussion session?” (Small World 32). Bearing in mind the inherent limitations of the scholarly idiom (not least of which is its reliable tendency to take itself too seriously), I have here sought to write a book of modest aims, one that simply seeks to sketch in a bit of western literary history by studying the development of concepts of literary character from the standpoint of inter-species relations. That is the book's sole purpose and the sole aim in light of which it should be evaluated.
Lodovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1516) begins with an encounter arranged by a horse. Having lost her protector to an onslaught of heathen warriors, the princess Angelica escapes the fray on her palfrey and falls into the company of the horseless Sacripante, King of Circassia, who has loved her long and unrequitedly. As the two make their way together, they are startled by an uproar in the nearby undergrowth, from which emerges the riderless Baiardo, steed of another suitor to Angelica, Rinaldo. Sacripante attempts to mount Baiardo, but the stallion submits only at the behest of Angelica, whom he greets, literally, “with human gesture” [“con…gesto umano” (1.75.2)]. Then, as the couple fare forward once more, Rinaldo appears, on foot, challenging Sacripante to combat for the theft of his horse and his lady.
Sacripante, astride Baiardo, turns to attack the disadvantaged Rinaldo, but the horse will have none of it:
The beast did know thus much by nature's force,
To hurt his master were a service bad.
The pagan could not nor with spur nor hand
Make him unto his mind to go or stand.
[(I)l destrier per instinto naturale
non volea fare al suo signore oltraggio:
né con man né con spron potea il Circasso
farlo a volontà sua muover mai passo.]
(2.6.4–8)
Thus obliged to dismount and fight hand to hand, Sacripante falls to blows with Rinaldo, and Angelica once more uses the confusion of battle as a cover for escape. As the episode concludes, Rinaldo regains his horse and sets off in pursuit of his beloved, and Ariosto's narrator pauses to explain Baiardo's bizarre behavior:
The horse (that had of humane wit some tast)
Ran not away for anie jadish knacke.
His going only was to this intent
To guide his maister where the Ladie went.
….….….….….….….…..
He followed her through valley, hill, and plaine,
Through woods and thickets for his maisters sake
Whom he permitted not to touch the raine
For feare lest he some other way should take.
[Fece il destrier, ch’avea intelletto umano,
non per vizio seguirsi tante miglia,
ma per guidar dove la donna giva,
il suo signor, da chi bramar l’udiva.
…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. .
Bramoso di ritrarlo ove fosse ela,
per la gran selva inanzi se gli messe;
né lo vlea lasciar montare in sella,
perché ad altro camin non lo volgesse.]
2.20.1–8, 22.1–4)
Only when the horse is satisfied that Rinaldo will indeed follow Angelica does he permit his master to mount him once again.
This sequence of events, comprising canto 1 and the first part of canto 2 of Ariosto's poem, can occur only because Baiardo, the horse, makes a series of calculated decisions: to abandon Rinaldo and pursue Angelica; by doing so to lead Rinaldo to Angelica; to refuse to engage in unequal combat against his master; and to reunite with his master when circumstances appear to warrant it. In the process, Baiardo reveals himself to possess what Ariosto calls “intelletto umano” (2.20.5). He distinguishes between persons, responds to certain ones with loyalty and intimacy, and confronts others with willful resistance. He occasionally differs in opinion even with his intimates, and he is prepared to translate this difference into uncooperative behavior. He is self-aware, acts on personal motives, reaches considered judgments concerning the motives and behavior of others, and engages in hypothetical reasoning. By all of these measures, Baiardo is a fully drawn literary character: an agent, a subject, a person.
Baiardo is not unique, either within Ariosto
