Context and Complexity: Cats, Pigs, and Jews in Art and Literature

            Throughout the quarter, we have constantly been told and been saying that what we know or believe about medieval animals is much more complex than what one author or interpretation offers. At times, this response seems almost automatic – if an explanation doesn’t explain everything or contradicts another argument, then the disagreement is reconciled by a simple, “It’s really more complicated than that.” Even Prof. Fulton Brown today commented on how quickly we concluded that the use of animals for insult and disgust was a complex situation. I hope to make it apparent that “complexity” needs to be more than an automatic response to differing arguments; complexity must be discussed in the context of the scenario or argument presented. It is context and specificity that lead to and enhance complexity. I propose to make this point by discussing the arguments made by Alexandra Cuffel in “Sign of the Beast: Animal Metaphors as Maledictions of Resistance and Opposition” and in Sara Lipton’s “Jews, heretics, and the sign of the cat in the Bible moralisée.”

            In her chapter “Sign of the Beast,” Cuffel proposes that medieval Christians, Jews, and Muslims all used similar visual vocabulary when talking about each other, such as lions for Christians or donkeys for Jews. More importantly, when one group was negatively targeted in the guise of an animal (Jews and donkeys, for instance), some authors subverted the attack by playing up the positive qualities of animal assigned to their group while pointing out the negative qualities of animals the attacker identified with.[1] However, a potential point of criticism arises from Cuffel’s tendency to make sweeping conclusions about all Christians or Jews or Muslims based on the mass of evidence she has gathered. For example, Cuffel cites a bestiary that states the following: “Sows signify sinners, the unclean, and heretics,”[2] which she uses to equate Jews with pigs. It is problematic that her source does not explicitly list Jews in addition to sinners, the unclean, or heretics. She does later admit, “Muslims are not mentioned in the bestiary texts, although Christian hearers and readers could have substituted ‘Muslim’ for ‘heretic’ and made an indirect association with certain animals in that way.” This implies that the same substitution could be made for Jews, which is perhaps the route her train of thought took. But regardless of the semantic structure of her argument, the fact remains that Cuffel takes specific instances, such as pigs associated with sinfulness and heresy, and generalizes them, implying that pigs are always symbols of heretics and Jews. 

            What Cuffel should have done, and what Lipton does do, is focus on the specific context in which statements are made. Lipton’s article discusses a specific type of text, the bible moralisée, and specific images of cats and Jews within extant manuscripts of that text. She proposes that the image of humans kissing the anus of cats arises as a criticism of the teaching of Aristotle using Jewish commentaries in early 13^th century Paris.[3] Lipton does not make some broad claim, like any time a cat appears in medieval art it carries an association with heresy and Judaism, as Cuffel seems to do. She is careful to confine the feline-Jewish relation to the bible moralisée, and even goes so far as to connect the contents of the manuscripts to the political and academic situation that they were likely created in. She analyzes these images in a very specific context, and keeps her analysis only in that context.

            We can see why Lipton’s form of analysis is preferable to Cuffel’s when we consider other texts about medieval cats. Malcolm Jones, in “Cats and Cat-skinning in Late Medieval Art and Life,” discusses the use of cats for cheap fur, a topic he was led to by a Hieronymus Bosch painting. But in seeking to identify the man shown with a cat-skin in the painting, (which he names a “pedlar”[4]), Jones does not even consider that the man must represent some sort of Jew-hunter, because he has a cat skin and cats are symbols of Jews, so the man must have symbolically killed a Jew. Nor does Barbara Newman, in her cruel joke of an article “The Catte’s Tale” propose that a Barking abbess possessed a cat as the result of some sort of hidden philo-Semitism. Why do neither Jones nor Newman make such claims? Because given the context of the image or the alleged poem, those claims would be ludicrous. They could have taken Cuffel’s approach and culled any evidence that would have supported such ridiculous hypothetical claims, but instead, they restrained their argument to a tightly-defined context of time and place of creation.

            I may just be harping on the need to be aware of context when stating that medieval views are ambiguous or complex, because in our class discussions no one proposes such laughable arguments as I have just proposed. We are implicitly aware of the need to remain within the context of time, place, and argument, but as we begin to write papers, it is important to be explicitly aware of it. Perhaps I am just concerned about my own argumentative writing. I admit, I was guilty of being sucked into Cuffel’s way of thinking when reading her article. She asserts that rabbits and hares were associated with Judaism, which I was tempted to use to counter Stoker and Stoker’s claim that rabbits were souls in need of salvation.[5] If rabbits were a symbol of Judaism, then the pillow mounds they use as evidence are actually somehow homes for Jews, rather than wandering Christian souls. This whole line of thinking was related to my paper topic, but admittedly, I neglected to consider that Stoker and Stoker made their argument with specific evidence in a specific context of how rabbits were viewed. “It’s more complex than that;” rabbits could be (and probably were) both representatives of lost souls and the Jewish people, just as pigs and cats were more than just stand-ins for Jews. Accepting complexity only works when recognizing different contexts.  

RAE

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[1] Cuffel, 205-209.

[2] Ibid., 226.

[3] Lipton, 373-377.

[4] Jones, 110.

[5] Stoker and Stoker, 270.

Look at my cat!

In looking at the uncomfortable reading on the character of animal insults, I was most interested by Sarah Lipton's demonstration of the gradual erasure of directly disgusting imagery around the cat, as the animal alone comes to stand for heresy. While the images she discusses begin with humans performing disgusting acts on cats, they end with the cat standing alone, automatically associated with that disgust. In that vein, I thought it might be useful to outline the characteristics of contemporary cat hatred or love, to deepen our understanding of just how much or how little the cat itself takes part in its bad reputation, then and now.
In her book Pets, Erica Fudge describes the gap in contemporary animal scholarship produced by the pet figure; whereas the medieval cat may have been more easily reviled for its familiar unfamiliarity, while the dog was admirable insofar as it was in tune with human desires, the contemporary pet is seen as denatured, as somehow less than animal (in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, the Oedipal animal). I'm reminded of Pen and Teller's (infuriating) episode of Bullsh*t in which they attack pet owners who seem to understand their pet as more than just a dumb animal; modern pet owners, at least in theory, operate between the ideas that the pet is either just a subservient animal, and therefore an unnecessary object of misplaced love, or that it is less than an animal and that what we call love is somehow denaturing the pet, saddling it with our own emotional/cultural baggage, Oedipal or otherwise. In both cases, the dependency of the pet is what makes it contemptible.
What is most interesting in Fudge's analysis of the function of the modern pet for the purpose of this course is what she and Yi-Fu Tuan call the "ontological security" a pet provides in a modern human home. Pets receive the affection we're unable to lavish elsewhere in the isolation of modern urban society, and they "give secure meaning to humans in an insecure modern world; they allow humans to live as if with a self-assured identity" (17). While they confirm our humanity, for better or worse, and allow us the connection with animals whose lack is characteristic of urban modernity, the existence of an animal in the home undermines our authority as well in defying our capacity to bound inside from outside: the cat-flap, Fudge remarks, "reveals the lack of security that is created by the pet" (19). She again formulates the pet as "a being that can reflect back to us our fragility even as it allows us to express a sense of power and control" (20): while I don't propose to conflate the modern cat with its medieval precursor, this ontological security is tellingly reminiscent of the hierarchy of creation we discussed in class.
Cats in this respect remain very different from dogs: from Pen and Teller's standpoint (which, in accordance with the show's general assumption of "common sensical-ness", distills more general cultural assumptions about its subject), cat ownership appears as somehow degenerate a priori, while dog owners have more leeway to love and know their animals before it becomes unacceptable. There remains the idea that dogs offer us something in the way of a relationship that cats do not, the image of a cat whose love for us is entirely manufactured by our own loneliness, or even a similar inability to interact with people. Cats are excessive, desired just for being what they are rather than insofar as they relate to us directly: mainstream cat competition is purely aesthetic, while dogs have agility meets, and even the dog show demands that they run around the ring with their handler/owner/partner. For those concerned with denaturing the animal, however, the dog's need to please is more problematic than the cat's "independent" dependency (I do feel uncomfortable talking about dogs and cats in general, as though there were a general cat, but I'll correct for that in a moment). In terms of popular animal lore, lost dogs travel great distances to find home and may die of grief at their master's passing; we have the competing image of the fear of being an old woman who dies alone and gets eaten by her cats.
Particularly interesting for the purpose of this course is Fudge's tracing of the movement from dog to cat in philosophy. She notes Basil the Great's use of the dog as a figure for philosophy, "sniff[ing] towards the truth" (77). The dog is here abstracted, reminding us of the superiority of our thought to their scent in finding such truths (77); in contrast, Michel de Montaigne asks, "When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?" The cat challenges the domestic sphere in a way that the dog does not (one rarely hears cat "owners" refer to themselves as such), and Fudge remarks that Montaigne's statement here rejects abstraction in favor of the real everydayness of playing with a cat: "symbolic animals have no place in his argument as they are always already human constructions" (79).

And now for my own disgusting cat (shown above). Sophie, of gentle mien and powerful scent. Her beauty distracts me from God, and her litter box humbles me again. Or something like that. Fudge ultimately argues that it is our guessing at what could constitute animal joy that makes love possible in this relationship. My cat takes joy in things that smell horrible (the best way to lure a lost cat into his carrier? Meat-flavored baby food), in inconvenient things (my laptop cord=the best toy ever). But even as I absorb and inevitably repeat our various cultural myths about snobby, dominating cats, or crazy cat people, etc, my cat is somehow outside this. She's much more affectionate than the stereotypical cat (I could project a lot here about her being a rescue animal, but calling our relationship "gratitude" is really, thoroughly uncomfortable). She roams the apartment, does her thing, and we encounter each other throughout the day.

Erica Fudge. Pets. Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing, 2008.
Sara Lipton, “Jews, heretics, and the sign of the cat in the Bible moralisée,” Word and Image 8.4 (1992): 362-77.

See also Jezebel's "Myth and Reality of the Crazy Cat Lady" here: http://jezebel.com/5296696/the-myth--reality-of-the-crazy-cat-lady

Animal Proverbs

I found Douglas Gray’s observation that “proverbial cats are more numerous and distinctly more interesting than bestiary cats” (195) to be a novel way of looking at animals in culture that had, up to now, not occurred to me. I happen to have a wonderful handbook of proverbs entitled “Ray’s Proverbs,” originally published in the first half of the 18th century and subsequently expanded and catalogued in the 19th. I decided to do a little test and see what  would come up under the heading of a few animals. The first entry I tried was “cat”:

1. A mewing cat is no good mouser. (Port., Gato meador nunca bom murador)
2. You can have no more of a cat than her skin.
3. The cat loves fish, but she’s loth to wet her feet.
4. The more you rub a cat on the rump, the higher she sets up her tail.
5. Though the cat winks a while, yet sure she is not blind.
6. How can the cat help it, if the maid be a fool? (Ital., Che ne può la gatta, se la massara è matta) – refers to not putting valuable things in a secure place where the cat can’t destroy them
7. When the cat is away, the mice will play.
8. When candles are out, all cats are grey. – refers to infidelity
9. The cat knows whose lips she licks.
10. Cry you mercy, kill’d my cat – “This is spoken to them who do one a shrewd turn, then make satisfaction with asking pardon or crying mercy”
11. I’ll keep no more cats than will catch mice. – refers to not keeping anyone in the household who will not do their share of work
12. Who shall hang the bell about the cat’s neck? – refers to a fable in which the mice gather to decide how to deal with the problem of the cat; they agree that to put a bell around its neck would be the best way to incapacitate the cat’s stealthy attack, but then the question comes, who will dare to put the bell on the cat?

Many of the characterizations of the cat that we found in Gray’s and other readings hold true in this sample. I find particularly interesting the “cat’s rump” proverb (#4), which describes, of course, a natural tendency in cats, but if one reads the cat as a stand-in for the devil, it takes on a whole moral dimension that was initially lost to me. Cats are inherently valueless creatures who are only useful as cheap furs or mousers (#1, #2, and #11); cats are dangerous observers, constantly watching you and scheming how to get what they want (#5 and #9); cats, in general, tend towards laziness and self-indulgence (#3, #6, and #8). Interestingly, there are a number of proverbs that seem to sympathize with the mouse, rather than the cat, once again casting the latter in a faintly oppressive or demonic light (#12). While the cat is generally a negative creature in these proverbs, it is interesting there are so many, compared to other creatures who receive much fuller treatment in the bestiaries and encyclopedias. Let us look at the lion, for example:

1. If the lion’s skin cannot, the fox’s shall. – that which cannot be done by force may be done by stealth
2. The lion’s not half so fierce as he’s painted.

That’s it. Two. And interestingly, both proverbs question the traditional assumption of the lion being the noblest and bravest of beasts, whereas the cat’s image is rather bolstered by her proverbs. Many other important bestiary species, such as the dove, the eagle, the leopard, the goat, the owl, and the elephant make little or no appearance in the book. It is either common, everyday animals of medieval life that seem to pick up the most “personality,” such as the dog, the horse, the crow, the fox, the ass, the cock, the cow, etc. Many of the livestock phrases seem like husbandry lore passed down in mnemonic devices: May come she early or come she late, she’ll make the cow to quake; A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay, But a swarm in July is not worth a fly; When the cuckoo comes to the bare thorn, sell your cow, and buy you corn. Household animals (either physically like cats, dogs, and horses, or in cultural memory like foxes and bears) have the longest lists of proverbs. Let us look at foxes:

1. The fox preys farthest from his hole. – Thieves steal far from home, to avoid suspicion
2. The fox never fares better than when he is bann’d.
3. When the fox preaches, beware of your geese.
4. Fire, quoth the fox, when he pissed on the ice. – “This is spoken in derision to those which have great expectation from some fond design or undertaking which is not likely to succeed”
5. The fox knows much, but more he that catcheth him.
6. Every fox must pay his own skin to the flayer.
7. A fox should not be of the jury at a goose trial.

In all these examples, the fox seems to be a pretty close stand-in for a thief, knave, or swindler. Most of the phrases have to do with the need for vigilance against such characters, and the reassurance that sooner or later, their deeds will catch up with them. As for the horse:

1. ‘Tis a good hose that never stumbles, and a good wife that never grumbles.
2. A good horse often wants a good spur.
3. ‘Tis an ill horse will not carry his own provender.
4. Let a horse drink when he will, not what he will.
5. The best horse needs breaking, and the aptest child needs teaching.
6. A galled horse will not endure the comb.
7. You may know the horse by his harness.
8. A short horse is soon wisp’d, and a bare ass soon kiss’d.
9. The horse that draws his halter is not quite escaped.
10. A running horse is an open sepulchre.

Unlike the fox, the horse proverbs all target the role of good management and rearing, even likening the process to selecting a wife and raising one’s children (this is not uncommon; I remember a Persian manual for kings that has chapters on how to choose a horse, how to choose a wife, and how to buy a slave in subsequent chapters). The horse has no personality, nor does he stand in for a human archetype. He is simply the bearer of a duty, a servant among the servants who can either be well-disciplined and beneficial, or spoiled and unruly. Finally, I’ll look at dogs:

1. Every dog hath his day, and every man his hour.
2. The hindmost dog may catch the hare.
3. He that would hang his dog, give out first that he is mad. – “He that is about to do any thing disingenuous, first bethinks himself of some plausible pretence”
4. He that keeps another man’s dog, shall have nothing left him but the line. – i.e., he  who bestows a gift upon an ungrateful person loses its cost.
5. What! keep a dog, and bark myself? – i.e., I have servants, and I must do my own work?
6. There are more ways to kill a dog than hanging.
7. Dogs bark before they bite.
8. ‘Tis an ill dog that deserves not a crust.
9. A good dog deserves a good bone.
10. He that lies down with dogs, must rise up with fleas.
11. Hungry dogs will eat dirty puddings.

The dogs seem somewhere between foxes and horses. They have a lowly, abject, servile personality, yet their loyalty is remarked upon (#4). There is clearly an understood difference of class between the speaker and the dog, and many of the proverbs reflect on dogs as necessary servants (#5, #6, #7, #8, #9). However, dogs can be stand-ins for people in some proverbs, such as #1, #2, and #11, which suggest a glimmer of potential or hope for even the most lowly of creatures. It is finally interesting to see how many proverbs refer to hanging (#3, #6, and there were others, but I didn’t list them because they were redundant)—this is the only animal we’ve seen so far in the world of proverbs that seem to be worthy of being rewarded or punished, thus, perhaps more potentially understood as possessing good and negative character traits.

Proverbs, as we can see, are a rich resource for thinking about animals as types, symbols, and stand-ins, because it is clear that they figure in a very different way in the public imagination than they do in something like a bestiary. Given that bestiaries were often religious, moralizing works that were more concerned with understanding and teaching truth, proverbs, fables, and fairy-tales may indeed suggest a different world of animal personalities and representations that is perhaps closer to the “popular” imagination of the time than works of philosophy and metaphysics.

References:

Bohn, Henry G. (Henry George), 1796-1884. A handbook of proverbs : comprising an entire republication of Ray's collection of English proverbs, with his additions from foreign languages : and a complete alphabetical index : in which are introduced large additions, as well of proverbs as of sayings, sentences, maxims, and phrases, collected by Henry G. Bohn. London : H. G. Bohn, 1857.

Gray, Douglas. "Notes on Some Medieval Mystical, Magical and Moral Cats." In Langland, the mystics, and the medieval English religious tradition : essays in honour of S.S. Hussey, ed., Helen Phillips. Cambridge : D.S. Brewer ; Rochester, NY, USA : Boydell & Brewer, 1990.