“A fit companion for my side:” the Virtue of the Companion Cat in Early Modern /post-Reformation Narratives
There are several strands to the meaning of “companion animals.” These range from a sense of service to a sense of love. These interconnect through a frame narrative that begins to take shape during the Reformation doctrinal controversy. This paper explores the increasing permeability of mainstream...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires du Midi
2020-10-01
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| Series: | Caliban: French Journal of English Studies |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/caliban/8854 |
| Summary: | There are several strands to the meaning of “companion animals.” These range from a sense of service to a sense of love. These interconnect through a frame narrative that begins to take shape during the Reformation doctrinal controversy. This paper explores the increasing permeability of mainstream early narratives in relation to the more unorthodox voices of animal advocacy, especially when these accounts hone in on the companion cat; it explores narratives that express wariness or disdain towards liminal and morally suspicious animal which circulate against accounts that relate experiences of complicity with cats. The many forms of companionship described around cats afford a plurality of generic discourses, from dictionaries and proverbs to textbooks on civility, from treatises on witchcraft to Church history, and from personal testimonies encountered in prison poems to fantastic dreams in anti-courtly verse. Each offers distinctly alternative accounts of cat companionship but all frame, scrutinize and weigh the literal and metaphorical virtue of such cohabitation. After revisiting questions of terminology, this article attends to the terms and conditions contracted and laid out by the feline or the human in order to secure the companionship, before exploring the narrative frameworks that determine the social or anti-social nature of the animal-human encounter and portray cats as partners in love and crime. |
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| ISSN: | 2425-6250 2431-1766 |