Human–Animal Comparisons: Supporting and Criticizing Female Subjugation in Renaissance Italy

ABSTRACT Studying gender history through an animal history lens, or vice versa, simultaneously increases our knowledge of ideas about gender and human–animal relations. This approach has particular merit for the Renaissance period, as it witnessed an upsurge in discourse about both the human–animal divide and the distinction between men and women. One means of combining a focus on animals and gender is by concentrating on explicit comparisons between human and non‐human animals. This article categorizes the different uses of human–animal comparisons as a rhetorical tool, making use of theological, medical and literary sources from fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Italy. It shows that these comparisons were used to both reinforce and criticize female subjugation. A framework of different uses of human–animal comparisons is provided, reflecting themes from the querelle des femmes : woman as temptress (1), female insatiability (2), the virtues of silence (3) and obedience (4), woman as prey (5), male violence (6), male infidelity (7), marital inequality (8) and sexual freedom as a human right (9). In the epilogue, the article's findings are used as a stepping stone to propose new lines of inquiry for future research combining the fields of gender studies and animal studies.