Bestiaries: Representations of animals in 20th century Romance languages and literatures

Posted on Apr 03, 2015, by Cosette Bruhns and Ana Ilievska, Graduate Student Assistants

The Joseph Regenstein Library, Third Floor
April 10 – June 13, 2015

A. A. Woodcut image of a dolphin originally accompanying a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire in his work ““Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée” (1911). — Woodcut by Raoul Dufy from Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée” (1911)

Books representing animals metamorphose and mutate; they might creep, crawl, or leap onto your shelf, surprise you, pique your interest, and make you reconsider your conception of ‘animal’ and human altogether. This exhibition dives into the 3^rd floor stacks to seek out the most interesting textual and visual representations of contemporary bestiaries written in the Romance languages. The final selection of books found in this exhibition illustrates the expanding definition of the bestiary and its portrayal of all things beastly in the 20^th century.