Research Catalog

Title

The bear : history of a fallen king / Michel Pastoureau ; translated by George Holoch.

Author

Pastoureau, Michel, 1947-

Publication

Cambridge : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Holoch, George

Description

343 p. : col. ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

The oldest discovered statue, fashioned some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, is of a bear. The lion was not always king. From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear's centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends from the Slavic East to Celtic Britain. The author, a historian considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by the advent of Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as a popular toy. The early Church was threatened by pagan legends of the bear's power, among them a widespread belief that male bears were sexually attracted to women and would violate them, producing half bear, half human beings, invincible warriors who founded royal lines. Marked for death by the clergy, bears were massacred. During the Renaissance, the demonic prestige bears had been assigned in biblical allegory was lost to the goat, ass, bat, and owl, who were the devil's new familiars, while the lion was crowned as the symbol of nobility. Once the undefeated champions of the Roman arena, prized in princely menageries, bears became entertainers in the marketplace, trained to perform humiliating tricks or muzzled and devoured by packs of dogs for the amusement of humans. By the early twentieth century, however, the bear would return from exile, making its way into the hearts of children everywhere as the teddy bear. This history reminds us that men and bears have always been inseparable, united by a kinship that gradually moved from nature to culture, a bond that continues to this day.

Uniform Title

L'ours : Histoire d'un roi déchu. English.

Alternative Title

L'ours : Histoire d'un roi déchu.

Subject

• Bears > Folklore
• Bears > Symbolic aspects
• Bears > Religious aspects
• Christian art and symbolism
• Animals and civilization

Genre/Form

Folklore

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The historian considers the animal -- The bear venerated : from the Paleolithic to the feudal era. The first god? ; King of the beasts ; The relative of man -- The bear combatted : from Charlemagne to Saint Louis. The saint stronger than the beast ; The bear in the house of the Devil ; The coronation of the lion -- The bear dethroned : from the late Middle Ages to the present. A humiliated animal ; Princes' whims, ladies' fantasies ; From mountain to museum -- The revenge of the bear.

ISBN

9780674047822 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2011017439

OCLC

• 709670300
• SCSB-12823105

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library