Relief on the Ishtar Gate, Pergamenmuseum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This beautiful lion has little to do with Valentine’s Day. It is part of the Ishtar Gate “constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II” in the area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq. (See Ishtar Gate, Wikipedia.) Ishtar was a goddess and Marduk the most powerful of two gods, he and Adad. Part of the gate was still standing in the early 1930s. It was taken to Germany and reconstructed. The Ishtar Gate had been put out of harm’s way before WW II, but it was bombed and reconstructed. Our lion is housed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and the Ishtar Gate is part of the UNESCOWorld Heritage. Many of the animals the gate features are housed in museums other than the Bergamon Museum.
Photo of the in situ remains from the 1930s of the excavation site in Babylon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the mušḫuššu dragons (zoomorphic) from the gate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Zoomorphism
It could be that our lion does not talk. Talking animals are anthropomorphic, but some combine the features of many animals. The unicorn and the dragon are zoomorphic, and so are animals that combine animal and human body parts. Others are therianthropic, or shape-shifting animals. The werewolf, or loup-garou, belongs to therianthropy, but fairytales may be the richest depository of metamorphoses. So many little princes and princesses are transformed into animals, such as toads. However, there are many works of literature featuring two persons, or duality. One of our best examples is Robert Louis Stevenson‘s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The New Year’s celebrations started immediately after the barley harvest, at the time of the vernal equinox. his was the first day of the ancient month of Nisan, equivalent to today’s date of March 20 or 21.
Roman poet Ovid wrote a Metamorphoses in 8 CE (Common Era). Apuleius (2nd century CE) wrote The Golden Ass, first entitled Metamorphoses. The Golden Ass contains The Tale of Psyche and Cupid, but its main narrative is the account of Lucius’ transformation into an Ass, rather than a bird. The Tale of Psyche and Cupid would be associated to the lore of Valentine’s Day, as would Rabbie Burns’ Red, Red Rose.
Once per year, the Ishtar Gate and connecting Processional Way were used for a New Year’s procession, which was part of a religious festival celebrating the beginning of the agricultural year. In Babylon, the rituals surrounding this holiday lasted twelve days. The New Year’s celebrations started immediately after the barley harvest, at the time of the vernal equinox. This was the first day of the ancient month of Nisan, equivalent to today’s date of March 20 or 21.
Christians associate Easter with the vernal equinox, but the vernal equinox happens globally. In Babylon, it was the New Year and inspired a procession among other celebrations of the agricultural year. But the governing factor concerning the date on which the procession would take place was the degree of lightness and darkness, the vernal equinox, when the degree and light and darkness is nearly equal. The earth feeds man and men and women perpetuate themselves. The rosettes, the red, red roses, above and below the lion are fertility symbols.
I was attracted by the image of the lion, but the Ishtar Gate was “foreign” to me. Now, I cannot help marvelling at all that binds us, hence this surprise post, except that I have studied and taught animals in literature, la Renardie. We have Reynard the Fox, Le Roman de Renart, tricksters, but we also speak of love, the Roman de la Rose. We all need our little corner of the world, but we are nevertheless the world.
Griffin fresco in the “Throne Room,” Palace of Knossos, Crete, Bronze Age. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Griffin
The red Griffin “rampant” was the coat of arms of the dukes of Pomerania and survives today as the armorial of West Pomeranian Voivodeship (historically, Farther Pomerania) in Poland.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant” (ramping, crawling).
Anthropomorphism
fables
beast epics
speaking animals
Animals in literature are, for the most part, humans in disguise, or anthropomorphic. As Jan M. Ziolkowski writes, “beasts override genre.”[1]Fables and fairy tales are genres, but beast literature is not.
Fables and Beast Epics
However, although beasts override genre, speaking animals are associated first with fables, such as Æsop’s Fables and Jean de La Fontaine’s, and, second, with beast epics, such as Reynard the Fox, or Le Roman de Renart, which narrows a much broader area of knowledge. Anthropomorphic animals are humans in disguise. In the Roman de Renart,all animalshave a name. In fact, Renart was so popular that foxes ceased to be called goupils in French. They became renards. Reynard the Fox is entitled Le Roman de Renart, where renard is spelled with a “t.”Renart is a trickster whose nemesis is the wolf named Ysengrin.
Le Roman de Renart, a French beast epic, is rooted in the Ysengrimus, a lengthy Latin mock-epic: 6,574 lines of elegiac couplets, written in 1148-1149 and attributed to Nivardus of Ghent. In the Isengrimus, Renart is Reinardus and will become the most famous and beloved animal in European beast literature. Renard is the fox of the “Fox and Crow” and other “fox” fables. In fact, the Roman de Renart, the first “branches” of which were written in the late twelfth century by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, is an outer fable containing inner fables (Ausserfabel and Innerfabeln), including Æsopic fables.[2]Æsopic fables preceded the Roman de Renart by a more than a thousand years.
Speech
“dire sans dire”
Aesopian
George Orwell
The main characteristic of anthropomorphic animals is their ability to speak a human language. Animals are very useful to writers because, when all said and done, animals have not said a thing. Jean de La Fontaine’s (1621-1695) fables have been described as a “dire-sans-dire” (to say without saying). They are “enveloped” tales, writes German scholar Jürgen Grimm. Therefore, anthropomorphism is an oblique literary discourse, a fiction within a fiction.
Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (27 January 1826 – 10 May 1889) first used the word Aesopian to describe a language unclear to outsiders, thereby allowing authors to say what they please with relative impunity. In 1945, George Orwell wrote an allegorical novella entitled Animal Farm. His animals are humans in disguise, hence their saying what they will not have said. Their own tongue is a language, but it is not a human language. Babe, the protagonist, a piglet, of a 1995 Australian film directed by Chris Noonan and produced by George Miller, is an anthropomorphic animal. The film is an adaptation of Dick King-Smith‘s 1983 novel: The Sheep-Pig.
The Story
La Fontaine did make each of his animals speak, but he also emphasized the power of fiction, in which he may have further distanced his speaking animals. In the Preface to his first collection of fables, books one to six, La Fontaine notes that Jesus of Nazareth spoke in parables. Parables are stories and, as such, they empower speech. To illustrate the power of stories, La Fontaine’s wrote a fable entitled Le Pouvoir des fables (VIII.4). It contains an inner fable about a speaker the people of Athens would not listen to until he turned to fiction, a story about Cerēs,the Roman goddess of agriculture. The moral of the “Power of Fables” is that we are all Athenians. La Fontaine writes that if Donkeyskin, a fairy tale, was told to him, it would give him enormous pleasure. The world is old, writes the fabulist, yet it is like a child we must amuse.
Moreover, a story is pleasurable and is not easily forgotten.
Nous sommes tous d’Athène en ce point, et moi-même, Au moment où je fais cette moralité, Si Peau d’âne m’était conté, J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême. Le monde est vieux, dit-on, je le crois; cependant Il faut l’amuser encor comme un enfant. Le Pouvoir des fables (VIII.4)
We’re all from Athens in this point of view, And I myself, while moralizing too
If I the tale of the Ass-skin should hear, I’d listen to it with a well-pleased ear.
The world is old, they say; I own it-still
We must sometimes indulge its childish will. The Power of Fables (VIII.4)
It should be noted, however, that La Fontaine believed in a “boundless universe,” where tout parle, everything speaks, which is anthropomorphism.
Car tout parle dans l’Univers; Il n’est rien qui n’ait son langage. (XI.Épilogue)
For in this boundless universe
Ther’s none that talketh, simpleton or sage
More eloquent at home than in my verse.
(XI.Epilogue)
Everything does speak. For instance, Milo Winter‘s illustrations for “The North Wind [Boreas] and the Sun” (“Phoebus and Boreas”) constitutes an example of elements, the wind and the sun, who speak as though they were humans. In short, anthropomorphism resembles a form of personification, which it is in“Phoebus and Boreas .”
giving animal features to anything (e. g. furniture)
Zoomorphism is a more complex concept than anthropomorphism and may be the reverse of anthropomorphism. Mythologies and myths are home to zoomorphic animals that combine the features of a human and an animal or the features of many animals. The centaur of Greek mythology is part human and part beast. Centaurs have the lower body of a horse, but the upper body of a human.
The Minotaur is the offspring of Pasiphaë, the wife of Cretan king Minos and the Cretan bull. He is part human and part bull and so evil a creature that he is kept in a labyrinth built by Daedalus. He is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. These two hybrid creatures, the centaur and the Minotaur may hold a mirror to mankind’s duality. Humans possess a mortal body and an immortal soul.
However, mythology also features composite animals. Cerberus, the vigilant dog guarding the gates to the Underworld is a three-headed dog. J. K. Rowling used Cerberus in her Harry Potter series. Her fifth book in the Harry Potter series is entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mythological animals have long inhabited the human psyche and are therefore somewhat familiar to readers. To my knowledge, no one escapes Cerberus’ attention, except Psyche. (See Cupid and Psyche, Wikipedia.) Pegasus, the winged horse, is also a well-known mythological being.
Mythologies are origin myths or aetiological. The Bible itself, the Scriptures or “the Word,” could be described as an aetiological text. It features fanciful angels who are human-like but have wings. In Greek mythology, for instance, animals have a lineage or a pedigree, as is the case with the above-mentioned Minotaur. In the growingly popular area of children’s literature, aetiological tales are called “Pourquoi” tales. The most famous example of a “Pourquoi” tale is Rudyard Kipling‘s (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) Just so stories.
Zoomorphic beasts may also be symbols. As mentioned above, those who mix the features of a human being may reflect the fall of mankind. Besides, an anthropomorphic serpent talked to Eve.
Mythologies and Myths
J. K. Rowling used not only Cerberus but the Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth. Symbolic beasts are mostly mythical rather than mythological, but readers and scholars tend to blur that line. The distinguishing criterion would be lineage. By and large, mythological beasts, such as the above-mentioned Minotaur and centaurs have a pedigree.
Mostly mythical animals are the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon, the griffin and the irresistible Sirens, mermaids mostly. Mermaids have the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish. These legendary beings may make an appearance in mythologies, but they are somewhat ubiquitous and often transcultural. The phoenix has often been described as a mythological animal and he has a story as does the Unicorn, but he does not possess the Minotaur’s lineage.
The dragon is our most ubiquitous imaginary animal and may be good or bad depending on his environment. In the West he is bad, but not so in the East. Unicorns and Sirens are also transcultural. These mythical animals are zoomorphic, but, in Medieval Bestiary, they are symbols.
The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.
Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.
The word zoomorphic is also used to describe pieces of furniture and architectural elements. For instance, the legs of wing chairs often imitate the feet of an animal. Besides wing chairs have wings. Among architectural element, the animal-like Gargoyle is a favourite. He is a waterspout with an open mouth. Bas-reliefs (shallow carvings on a flat surface, such as a wall) may also contain animal-like architectural elements. They embellish buildings. All animal-like creatures inhabiting the medieval bestiary are allegorical or symbolic.
The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Other Beasts
metamorphosis
therianthropic beasts
lycanthropy
Both the terms anthropomorphism and zoomorphism include morphism. Morphism suggests a metamorphosis, or a transformation in a being’s appearance, which may be a wish human beings share, just as they share the wish to fly. Roman writer Ovid (20 March 43 BCE – CE 17/18) is the author of the extremely influential Metamorphosesand Berber Latin writer Apuleius (c. 124 – c. 170 CE) wrote The Golden Ass, which contains the lovely tale ofCupid and Psyche. Lucius, the protagonist of The Golden Ass, is mistakenly transformed into an ass when attempting to be transformed into a bird.
Beast literature features therianthropic animals, who are the victims of a curse. Beast in Beauty and the Beast is a therianthropic being. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.
Animals as Types
In the Preface to his translation of Æsop’s Fables, John Fyler Townsend writes that animals are types, much like the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte.
The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. [EBook #21]
Zoomorphic animals are not types. However, there is a commonality between animals and humans, Darwinism is a subject we will not discuss. Mythical and mythological animals may be up to no good, but they are not mutating. Moreover, I consider totemism, animal ancestry, the preserve of anthropologists.
Conclusion
Beast literature is a huge topic. We cannot escape any of the categories mentioned in this post. Yet, anthropomorphism is its chief characteristics because of the prominence of fables and the Roman de Renart, Reynard the Fox. One could define the usefulness of anthropomorphic animals by using Gertrude Stein‘s a rose is a rose is a rose.
Well, at the end of the day, a fox is a fox is a fox, therein the wizardry of a large part of beast literature. However, we remember the story. Dear La Fontaine.
[I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150(The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 1. [II]Jean Batany, Scène et coulisses du « Roman de Renart » (Paris: Cedes, 1989), p. 57.
When the griffin or other mythical/mythological animal is featured on a crest in a climbing position, he is called “rampant.”
Anthropomorphism
Æsopic, Libystic and Sybaritic fables
Anthropomorphism was defined in my post on Vaux-le-Vicomte. Moreover, Milo Winter’s illustrations for “The North Wind and the Sun” provide examples of elements disguised as human beings. Fabulist Jean de La Fontaine used anthropomorphism: animals, elements, vegetation, mountains. In some fables, he featured humans and who were viewed as morally inferior to animals. TheMan and the Snake(The Man and the Adder or L’Homme et la Couleuvre [X.1]) is an example of the use of an inferior human being in a fable. Fables featuring beasts only are called Æsopic. Those featuring human beings interacting with beasts are called libystic, and those featuring humans only are sybaritic fables.[I]
The Use of Anthropomorphism
a fox is a fox is a fox
The word Æsopian refers to a language that can only be understood by people other than insiders. Nineteenth-century Russian satirist Mikhail YevgrafovichSaltykov-Shchedri was the first to use the term æsopian language. Animals speak and do no speak. In the end, as eloquent as he may be, a fox is a fox is a fox. Gertrude Stein’s “a rose is a rose is a rose” captured the spirit of anthropomorphism. Whether they are used as a carpe diem or a memento mori, roses are roses are roses.
In 1997, in his review of Marc Fumaroli‘s Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son temps, Charles Rosen wrote that “[w]ith La Fontaine’s Fables, we do not have to burrow far under the surface to recognize a discreet opposition to the grandeur of style and the servile obedience wanted by the court, an opposition never openly expressed but manifest on every page.” (The New York Review of Books, “The Fabulous La Fontaine,” (18 December 1997.)[II] Fables feature speaking animals, but readers know that animals do not speak just as Louis knows he is not a lion. Therein lies the wizardry of beast fables.
Animals as Types
In the preface to his translation of Aesop’s fable, Townsend writes that
“The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient” and all of this, “by mutual consent.”
However, certain legendary or mythical animals as well as mythological animals are hybrid creatures who combine the features of humans and those of an animal or combine the features of several animals. Zoomorphic animals are also anthropomorphic, or humans in disguise.
Well-known animals that combine human and animal features are centaurs and the Minotaur. Centaurs have the torso of a man or a woman, but their lower body is that of a horse. The Minotaur, he is the son of Pasiphaë and a bull. He is therefore a hybrid animal that is kept in a labyrinth built by Dædalus. The Minotaur is slain by Theseus who finds his way through the labyrinth using Ariadne‘s thread. Theseus also slays a centaur. Zoomorphic animals may belong to a mythology, in which case they have lineage and ancestors. Interestingly, angels have wings, but they are otherwise identical to human beings.
Usually, mythologies tell a story that explains origins. They are etiological narratives. In children’s literature, etiological narratives are called “pourquoi” (why) stories. Rudyard Kipling‘s Just So Stories (1902) are “pourquoi” narratives. However, some legendary creatures, such as the phoenix, appear to straddle both categories, the mythical and the mythological. The distinguishing factor could be the degree of symbolism attributed to the animal. The more symbolic the animal, the more mythical. By and large, mythical animals are zoomorphic and have no lineage. Relatively few are not featured in etiological narratives, such as the Bible and and many inhabit the medieval bestiary. Bestiaries are allegorical.
Zoomorphic Beasts
The dragon, the griffin, and the unicorn are zoomorphic animals combining the features of many animals. They are legendary or mythical animals, rather than mythological beasts. However, both the griffin and the phoenix do belong to certain mythologies. It may be legitimate to separate the dragon, the griffin, the phoenix and the unicorn from other zoomorphic animals in that all four are likely to appear as symbols, but so do other legendary animals. The phoenix, who rises from his own ashes, is a symbol of rebirth. The unicorn appears in the Bible, but he is not listed in Donald Ray Schwartz’s Noah’s Ark, the Hebrew Bible.[III] The Western unicorn cannot be captured by a person other than a virgin. He is therefore emblematic of chaste love. In children’s literature, he is often described as an animal who missed the boat: Noah’s Ark. (See Unicorn, Wikipedia.)
The dragon‘s characteristics change from culture to culture. He is feared in the West, but not in China.
The griffin, shown at the top of this post, a lion mostly, with the head of an eagle, is a guardian. In antiquity, he was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine.
The unicorn has one horn and plays various roles from culture to culture. In Western culture, he is, as mentioned above, “emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.”
Given that he rises from his own ashes, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth and very popular.
The Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) A phoenix depicted in a book of mythological creatures by F. J. Bertuch (1747-1822).(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Other Zoomorphic Animals
Other relatively well-known zoomorphic animals, combining animal features only, are Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, or Cerberus/Kerberos, the three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the underworld. In The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche is told how to avoid him, which enables her to fetch beauty from Persephone without dying. Locksmiths and businesses that provide alarm systems often name their store or company Cerberus/Kerberos.
There are medieval love bestiaries, such as Richard de Fournival‘s Bestiaire d’amour (ms 12469 Bibliothèque nationale de France). In medieval bestiary, animals are used allegorically. In fact, animals inhabiting medieval bestiaries are allegorical figures and they are usually the same from author to author. They are as described by Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 25 August 79 CE), Isidore of Seville, etc. or as described in the 2nd century CE Physiologus. (SeePhysiologus, Wikipedia.) However, the unicorn and the griffin are often featured on coats of arms, shields, helmets, and blazons in heraldry. (See Zoomorphism, Wikipedia.)
High Fantasy Literary Works and other Literary Works
They are also featured in children’s literature. Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is a children’s novel, but such works are best understood by adults if poorly illustrated.
Therianthropic animals, humans that transform themselves into beast and vice versa can be looked upon as zoomorphic creatures. There are therianthropic beings in fairy tales, which is usually the result of a curse. A fine example is Beauty and the Beast. Enchantment is central to fairy tales. But shapeshifting animals bring to mind the werewolf (le loup-garou), a lycanthrope, rather than fairy tales.
Beast literature is not an animal counterpart of fairy-tales.
The above shows, among other factors, to what extent humans see commonality with animals, but not as in Darwinism.
_________________________ [I] Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750 – 1150(The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 18.[II] Marc Fumaroli, Le Poète et le Roi, Jean de La Fontaine en son siècle (Éditions de Fallois, 1997).[III]Donald Ray Schwartz, Noah’s Ark, an Annotated Encyclopedia of every Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible (Jason Aron Inc.: Northvale, New Jersey, Jerusalem, 2000).
Although Reynard the Fox remains in the collective memory of Europeans and is transformed into a rabbit in the Tales of Uncle Remus, beasts enter different narratives and stem from other sources.
Since we have introduced Bestiaries, I must also reveal some of these other sources. Writers of Bestiaries find their main source in the Physiologus, an anonymous Greek–language text, probably written in the second century CE. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “The Physiologus consists of 48 sections, each dealing with one creature, plant, or stone and each linked to a biblical text.” Among animals featured in the Physiologus, many are borrowed from India, which attests, once again, to the universality of ‘stories.’
Mythological animals. In an earlier blog, I quoted Machiavelli who wished his prince were like the Centaur, half human, half beast. Greek mythologies’ Centaur is half horse and belongs to Greek Mythology as does the Minotaur, the son of Pasiphaë and a bull. The Satyrs are also part human. In Roman mythology, Satyrs are part goat. In this category, we also find animals that combine the features of many animals. Cerberus is a three-headed dog, used by J. K. Rowling. Pegasus is a winged horse. So mythologies are very rich source of animal figures.
Mythical animals.[i]Bestiaries also incorporate mythical animals, such as the Unicorn and the Dragon. As for the Griffinand the Phœnix (see Herodotus), they straddle the mythical (i.e. legendary and symbolic) and the mythological. Mythologies are aetiological texts. They tell about origins.
The dragon and the Unicorn are very popular in Western best literature, but they also appear in Eastern mythologies. In India, the Unicorn is a mythological animal and if Western dragons are feared, Oriental dragons are friendly. In children’s literature, the Unicorn literally missed the boat, Noak’s Ark.
Allegories or Animals as Symbols
These animals are not necessarily humans in disguise, but they can be used to represent humans. In Richard de Fournival‘s (1201-1260) courtly Bestiaire d’amour, an allegorical text, animals are used to symbolize women. Richard de Fournival was also the composer of love songs. These animals may also be used as emblemsand inheraldry (blazons, coats of arms, etc.).
Le Blason de Saint-Lô
Historians and Naturalists
Finally, content is taken from historians and naturalists.
Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) wrote a History of Animals, De animalium. Herodotus (c. 484 BCE – c. 425 BCE) is the first historian, and he includes animals in his Histories. For instance, he describes the hippopotamus, the crocodile and the phœnix.
Claudius Alienus, (ca. 175 – ca. 235 CE) a Roman author, wrote De Natura Animalium(in 17 books) and Historia. On the Characteristics of Animals (De Natura Animalium) is still available, in 3 volumes.[ii]
Among historians and naturalists, not all have seen the animals they depict. They simply use descriptions given to them by travellers. For instance, in Greece, the monoceros is the Unicorn, not a rhinoceros. The existence of an animal having one horn had been reported to historians and from this report emerged the Unicorn. Similarly, Herodotus described the Phœnix and he made it ‘real.’ Yet, the Phœnix is as imaginary an animal, as the Chimera.
The Chimera
In modern literature, Latin American authors often introduce imaginary creatures into contexts that may be fictional, but not imaginary. An example of “magical realism” is Jorge Luis Borges’s (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) El libro de los seres imaginarios, (The Book of Imaginary Beings), 1957. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is also deemed “magical realism.”
Bestiaries originate in many traditions and often feature imaginary or fantastical animals. But later these animals will be found in high fantasy works, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s above-mentioned Lord of the Rings. As well, these animals will also be found in J.K. Rowling‘s extremely popular Harry Potter series.We have a Harry Potter and the Order of the Phœnix (2003). However, I am looking a little too far in the future.
In short, animals are everywhere, telling what might otherwise have remained, or would remain, unsaid and when they inhabit mythologies, they also serve to give us a past. But there is more to tell…
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