On Kay, Sarah. Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Kay explores how the prominent medieval genre of the French and Latin bestiary interrogates the boundary between its (human) readers and the (other) animals it depicted as having inherent behaviors/traits that the reader should or should not imitate. Kay’s argument seems highly original, due to her literal and figurative linking of animals within the books that represent them. She points out that most surviving bestiaries are copied on parchment made of animal skin, which (creepily) resembles human skin. Bestiaries’ physical material, and ideological content, are linked by references to animal skins appearing frequently within bestiaries’ texts. Shedding light on French/Latin bestiaries and their power for assisting readers in conceiving their own identities, this book contributes both to animal studies and medieval manuscript studies, which not all the sources annotated herein do. While scholars such as McCracken, Ralph, and Erwin take an animal studies approach to literary works, and scholars such as Koyuncu apply literary theory to animal studies/issues in the middle ages, this book is unique in that it combines animal studies and textual studies approaches.on