Pastoureau brings erudition and expertise to his subject as he traces how the bear was a venerated figure in pagan Europe, but dethroned as king of beasts by Christianity. He makes an important contribution by providing a long history of the bear, an animal whose symbolic importance is unknown by many. Readers will be treated to an elegant review of medieval history and theology, as well as informed discussions about the art on cave walls, the boundary between humans and animals in Greek myth, the philosophical foundations of natural history from Aristotle to Buffon, and a wealth of information about popular culture during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. -- Matthew Senior, Oberlin College
Michel Pastoureau is a historian and Director of Studies at l'École pratique des hautes études (Sorbonne) and at l'École pratique des hautes études en sciences sociales.
Pastoureau brings erudition and expertise to his subject as he
traces how the bear was a venerated figure in pagan Europe, but
dethroned as king of beasts by Christianity. He makes an important
contribution by providing a long history of the bear, an animal
whose symbolic importance is unknown by many. Readers will be
treated to an elegant review of medieval history and theology, as
well as informed discussions about the art on cave walls, the
boundary between humans and animals in Greek myth, the
philosophical foundations of natural history from Aristotle to
Buffon, and a wealth of information about popular culture during
the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
*Matthew Senior, Oberlin College*
The scholarship displayed in this groundbreaking study is the best
kind: deep, broad, imaginative. Medievalist Pastoureau takes on the
history of the bear, that exceptional animal once said to most
resemble man. Once king of the beasts in the West, at times even
god, the bear was hunted down in Europe from the time of
Charlemagne (d. 814) and its image systematically degraded. By the
end of the 12th century, the bear's place as king of the beasts had
been usurped by the lion. Henceforth the bear was largely a figure
of ridicule. How did this happen? What purposes did the change
serve? Pastoureau uses evidence from history, textual analysis,
heraldry, anthropology, and iconography to produce an eclectic
study that not only reads like a dream but opens avenues for future
research.
*Library Journal*
William Kotzwinkle (The Bear Went Over the Mountain) and Bella
Pollen (The Summer of the Bear) have already demonstrated the
appeal of ursine protagonists. But their treatment of our bruinish
cousins is nowhere near as encyclopedic as that of Michel
Pastoureau, who starts his survey in prehistory and rambles down to
the present, tracing the biology, allure, and legends of bears
right up to the cuddly teddy bear that represents a hearthside
version of the former king of beasts.
*Barnes & Noble Review*
The animal that dominated the forests of prehistoric and early
medieval Europe--and the collective unconscious of Europeans--was,
naturally, the largest and strongest creature there, the brown
bear...Uncannily human-like in its diet, supposed sexual tastes and
ability to stand upright, the bear was seen as an intermediary
creature dwelling between the human and animal worlds. It appears
in countless myths: Paris, who stole away Helen and sparked the
Trojan War, was raised by a she-bear whose milk gave him a taste
for abduction. And it has always provided personal names in various
European languages, from the epic hero Beowulf (meaning bee-wolf,
meaning honey-loving bear) to tennis ace Bjorn (Bear) Borg. What
drove Europe's king of beasts from his throne and demoted him to
the pitiful dancing entertainer of the late Middle Ages is the core
of Pastoureau's engrossing book. And the short answer is
Christianity.
*Maclean's*
The chief subject of Pastoureau's fascinating book...is not the
prominent place bears once held in the human imagination but the
manner in which they fell from that place.
*New York Times Book Review*
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