Animal symbolism in the literature of medieval and modern Italy

The latest volume of Éva Vígh is from the 13th-17th centuries. It undertook to present the history of Italian culture and literature in the twentieth century in a special way. For the most significant authors and genres of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque, he focused on the symbolic meaning of animals and the role of zoomorphic interpretation. In addition to Dante’s griffin bird, Petrarca’s phoenix, Boccaccio’s cats, Ariosto’s hippogriff or Machiavelli’s donkey, we can get to know the medieval and renaissance bestariums. Leonardo da Vinci’s Animal Book, the full translation of which can also be read, projects with iconological explanations the animal symbolism that characterizes the emblematic book of Cesare Ripa or Giulio Cesare Capaccio. The interpretation of the animal figures inhabiting the poetic world of Tasso, the Renaissance animal tale of the Aesopian tradition, and Della Porta’s physiognomic-zoomorphic worldview take the reader into the Baroque era. The politics of the courts of this period is illustrated in the volume through the political aphorisms of Tesauro’s collection of animal tales. The academic speech of the greatest Baroque poet, Giambattista Marino, on the protection of animals (also in full translation) conveys a message for contemporary readers to consider as well. The approximately 150 black-and-white and color animal illustrations for each chapter also illustrate the moral interoperability between humanitas and animalitas.