Fit for a Dog? Food Sharing and the Medieval Human/Animal Divide

Abstract

Medieval unease with human animality manifests itself strongly in attitudes toward and proscriptions concerning food sharing. This is particularly true with dogs, the nonhuman animals with whom humans most intimately share both the procurement and consumption of food, and who are routinely figured as embodying many of the best and worst characteristics associated with humans. Through a range of late medieval texts, this paper will probe the precarious boundary between human and nonhuman animals in the medieval imagination by considering the portrait of Chaucer’s Prioress and her lapdogs in The Canterbury Tales; depictions of dogs in the hunt in medieval romance; and the strange tale of Sir Gowther, whose penance is to eat only what he receives from the mouth of a dog. Rather than supporting claims for an essential difference between human and nonhuman animal, such examples further emphasize the fluidity of the two categories.