Aristotelian Zoology in <i>Piers Plowman B</i> : Preserving Species and Precarious Lives

Although Reason's appeal to Genesis toward the end of the third dream of William Langland's Piers Plowman may work locally to persuade Will the Dreamer to reconcile himself to human nature, and to his own nature as it is, it also glosses the vision of the natural world, the Vision of Kynde, that Will has just witnessed. This is a revelatory dream within a dream given by Kynde, both Nature and Nature's God.2 Humankind takes a small place in this kaleidoscopic vision. Will sees “Man and his make” but only after he has seen “where þat briddis and beestes by hir make þei yeden” (B.11.324). And that human couple gives way directly to a great range of animals engaged in copulating, shielding fetus or egg, and protecting their young (B.11.334–62). In the vision, Reason, as a figure for the foundational principles of the created world, accompanies and guides all animals “in engendryge of kynde,” supervising beasts and birds as they engage in the teleological processes that preserve their species.3 Reason acts for a God who has created and sustains animals in activities that benefit them as members of a species. While any fourteenth-century English man or woman could observe some of the vision's details of ways and times of copulating, of where nests are built, and of how eggs and offspring are protected from predators, the vision's focus on these processes, on the drive to preserve species and the lives of the vulnerable, and even on close observation of animal conduct itself, are the trademarks of Aristotelian zoology. This Aristotelian approach affects what animal activities are envisioned and how they are described, often with detail found in Aristotle's treatises on animals. The translation, study, and adaptation of Aristotle's books on animals sparked “the thirteenth-century animal turn” (Nigel Harris's term), a great upsurge in learned Latin texts detailing the conduct of animals and bringing to the fore dimensions of animal life neglected in earlier medieval texts, like bestiaries, even second-family ones.4 This Aristotelian concern with copulating, nest building, protecting, and feeding, and with the final cause that drives this behavior, weaves in and out of the third, fourth, and fifth dreams of Piers. It links beasts and birds (especially) to the human animal as they follow the processes that ensure that species and individual animals not only survive, but flourish, in a nature ordered by their Creator.5 To read these dreams alongside Aristotle's zoological works in their medieval versions, the encyclopedias compiled in their wake, and the moral texts citing them, is to grasp what the regular activities of animals offer to Will and to the poem's readers as a way of living purposively and “naturally” within the community of human animals situated within the web of all animal life.For decades, readers of the Vision of Kynde have tended to view the Vision in terms of what Will protests against at its end: the disordered sexual conduct of humans and what sets them apart from the other quadrupeds as they follow instinctually ordered copulation, especially their restraint out of rutting is given to birds in and for their eggs and as they in Aristotle's and treatises on animals. the beasts with its birds is a focus on the and of their to how the Vision as a and in its details with Aristotle's especially the thirteenth-century English on how humans to the in and as as In them, Aristotle's on animals are and as texts on the and of all medieval treatises the in the human in to animal their their and their of and To read the vision in terms of the human that is of to the Vision to how its of the processes of and protecting life on that how Kynde, as nature and animal species. it how the Vision readers for on the activities of birds that how humans other animals in to preserve human has how God and nature are in the figure of Kynde and how Kynde for While Aristotelian zoological and in this on some of Kynde and the humans and other from and texts to has the and the who Aristotelian natural is also of who Aristotelian they that the regular teleological processes in nature could not only of the but also is to that the of birds and especially species like that of the that has what and some of the turn” of for the Vision readers to their with other animals in and to in other animals. to the for all animal they or in toward the of their conduct of birds and beasts in the Vision the as has with its human on the that humans the that other animals moral terms like and to animals “the human and animal In as a that to of the end of this third dream of it is humans who are in as Will of Will to in his that the birds and beasts are ways to a life in the human by the teleological drive of all animals to preserve their species on the activities of protecting, and individual the Vision has the to readers to and to how its beasts and birds ways are by his in the of the third vision and the at Will is out how to his life to the activities of often and all to human life as of animal life created by who for what and humans with other like birds and to the lives of the vulnerable, and natural and with a to their own is with any other In he compiled and their medieval Latin In these especially the he a of on the and of animal and in the in the and in their and behavior, as he at the of the these details of animal and behavior, the regular processes and of animal life of a of the he works to processes in by their final by what animals as to not to as what their the of for them other in terms of the to they In Aristotle's of the in are as or as final cause at a and its in the of The natural processes and that animals and the them to and to in their natural are not only the end of the or but also to To the concern of the zoological that animals to of their species that it may as of the natural In the of he of the and the to animals this from the Latin of his zoological works from the by the they as a the final cause for the drive to the life of the in the of both beasts and as them in Piers the of animals in medieval or even of and of medieval readers a and of the and of with from with Aristotle's other it in the of the of by as it in by the where the books to have of and the other books and and after of on the Latin to the humans and other their as as their in texts by them, the the his on his own of animal and behavior, his for them, and his of Aristotle's terms of Aristotle's To books Aristotle's zoological principles in and as final of animals. 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