Content area
Abstract
This dissertation argues that medieval falconry manuals offered readers an important means of interpreting and understanding poetic texts because in their instructions for the physical training of birds they also figured a process of training to read. As falconry and the manuals that describe it gained popularity in the High Middle Ages, so too did the symbolism of falconry in medieval culture. The symbol of an untamed falcon, for instance, stood for an uncontrollable woman to be trained into wifely submission. Despite these manuals’ physical juxtaposition to poetry and the frequent references to falconry training within literary texts, current scholarship in the fields of medieval studies and animal studies has not addressed the ways that falconry manuals influenced medieval reading practices. My project is the first to treat falconry not simply as the subject of a cultural studies approach, but rather as a crucial component in literate and literary culture in the Middle Ages. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)
