tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4176769156825838190.post6307233270164729157..comments2022-04-11T01:28:17.873-07:00Comments on A Blog of Beasts!: Animal Trials in the 20th CenturyAnimals in the Middle Ageshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10809281152134119502noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4176769156825838190.post-75600729793903233612010-11-21T16:16:57.328-08:002010-11-21T16:16:57.328-08:00I would be interested to know more about how you f...I would be interested to know more about how you found these particular cases and how representative they are of modern justice. That said, the comparison makes me wonder about how representative the pig cases that we talked about in class actually were: if we can find instances in which animals were put on trial in our own day even though such cases are relatively unusual, it should make us wonder about how normative trying pigs for murder actually was in the fourteen or fifteenth century. That said, again, it occurs to me that two of the examples you give here are for "trickery" rather than harm; even we find them absurd, whereas there is little indication in the sources that there was any humor in medieval or early modern animal trials. Although rereading, I realize that the humor in the second trial is more in the outcome than in the incident; the monkey actually bit the woman who tried to take the candy back. A fuller comparison of the pre- and post-Evans trials would need to take into account the ways in which our ideas about animals have changed (in part, thanks to arguments like Evans'). Thus it seems simply grotesque to electrocute the dog rather than a way of dealing with an otherwise intolerable event. But I think you are definitely on the right track to help us make better sense of the trials.<br /><br />RLFBAnimals in the Middle Ageshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10809281152134119502noreply@blogger.com