Circe Stories
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CIRCE STORIES: TRANSFORMATION, ANIMALS, AND NATURAL HISTORY, 1550-1750 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Bryan Charles Alkemeyer May 2012 © 2012 Bryan Charles Alkemeyer CIRCE STORIES: TRANSFORMATION, ANIMALS, AND NATURAL HISTORY, 1550-1750 Bryan Alkemeyer, Ph.D. Cornell University 2012 This dissertation argues that works by authors including Gelli, Spenser, Milton, and Swift participate in a previously overlooked tradition of transformation stories, flourishing from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and re-deploying representations of animals from natural histories. This tradition derives from the innovative re-telling of Homer’s Circe episode in Plutarch’s dialogue “Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti,” featuring Gryllus, a former human who prefers to be a pig. Comparing sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century analogues of Gryllus with representations of animals in natural histories reveals that the Plutarchian literary tradition functions as a major vehicle for arguments about the human/animal relationship, from Gelli’s Circe (1549), through book 2 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) and Milton’s Comus (1634), until the parodic treatment of the Plutarchian tradition in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Often critiquing forms of anthropocentrism, the works of the Plutarchian tradition draw on representations of animals in natural histories in order to define the meaning of characters who desire transformation between human and animal states. Furthermore, new understandings of individual works can be achieved by locating them within the larger literary tradition in which they participate. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Bryan Alkemeyer graduated from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in English Literature in May 2012. His research interests include Renaissance and eighteenth-century literature, animal studies, and the history of science. In the 2009-2010 academic year, he was an Exchange Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an M.A. in English Literature from Cornell University in August 2009. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a B.A. in English in December 2005. iv To Mom, who taught me to read, and To Dad, who taught me to love stories. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For comments and suggestions on all parts of this project, I am grateful to my dissertation committee at Cornell University: Laura Brown, Fredric Bogel, Neil Saccamano, Rayna Kalas, and Jenny Mann. While working on material for chapter 1, I had helpful conversations with Lindsay Sears, especially about classical works. Ian Duncan generously provided feedback on drafts of chapters 2, 4, and 5 during my time as an Exchange Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. For comments on chapter 4, I am also grateful to India Mandelkern, Grant Johnson, Antonia Leotsakos, and an anonymous reviewer. I have enjoyed the opportunity to develop my ideas further by teaching many of the literary works featured in this dissertation to several classes of undergraduates at Cornell University. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v Note on the Text vii Chapter 1 Renaissance Animalism: A Plutarchian Tradition of Transformations 1 Chapter 2 Reminding the Elephant: Animal Rhetoric, Patriotism, and Religion in Gelli’s Circe 34 Chapter 3 The Many Creatures in Circe’s Sties: Pigs in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Milton’s Comus 117 Chapter 4 The Natural History of the Houyhnhnm: Ethical Treatment for Horses in Gulliver’s Travels 187 Chapter 5 Becoming Houyhnhnm: Parody of Circe’s Transformations in Gulliver’s Travels 223 Epilogue The After-Life of the Circe Narrative: Transformations in The Island of Doctor Moreau 267 Bibliography 280 vii NOTE ON THE TEXT In reproducing early orthography, I have expanded abbreviations and modernized the usage of “i” and “j,” “f” and “s,” and “u” and “v.” 1 CHAPTER 1 RENAISSANCE ANIMALISM: A PLUTARCHIAN TRADITION OF TRANSFORMATIONS Expanding Plutarch’s dialogue “Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti” into a series of dialogues between Ulysses and eleven talking animals, Giovanni Battista Gelli’s Circe (1549) inaugurates, I argue, a Plutarchian tradition of transformation stories, distinct from a Homeric tradition of representing Circe’s transformations and further developed by many Renaissance works, including book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) and John Milton’s Comus (1634).1 Plutarch’s innovative dialogue adapts Homer’s Circe episode by imagining a conversation between Odysseus and Gryllus, a former human who refuses rescue from Circe’s island because he prefers his new existence as a pig. Gryllus’s desire to be an animal, I demonstrate, belongs to a larger constellation of Plutarchian motifs, which both imagine the disintegration of human identity and challenge the superiority of humans to animals. This Plutarchian constellation contrasts sharply with a constellation of motifs derived from the Circe episode in Homer’s Odyssey, which emphasizes the endurance of human identity in spite of bodily transformation and thus reinforces distinctions between humans and animals. My account reveals that stories about complete transformations of humans into animals have a subordinate role in the tradition of Circe stories until the Renaissance revival of Plutarch’s dialogue. Stith Thompson’s famous Motif-Index prioritizes stories of complete transformations 1 For a survey of the Circean tradition that emphasizes issues of gender and sexuality, see Judith Yarnall, Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994). Yarnall’s book is a valuable reference on the history of stories about Circe, and allusions to her, from antiquity through the twentieth century. 2 by making “Transformation: man to animal” a major sub-heading under the category “Transformation” while listing “Partial transformation: animal with human mind” under the implicitly marginalized category “Miscellaneous transformation incidents.”2 In contrast to Thompson’s model, my account of the tradition of Circe stories shows that Homeric stories about exclusively bodily transformations have priority over Plutarchian stories about full transformations. Although both Homer’s Odyssey and Plutarch’s dialogue become new subjects of fascination in the Renaissance,3 Renaissance writers invert the earlier prioritization of transformation stories as they develop a Plutarchian tradition in opposition to Homer’s model. These literary innovations occur because of a shift in conceptions of human nature; thus, the development of a Plutarchian tradition of transformations relates intimately to the rise of humanist ideals, rejected by the literary descendants of Plutarch’s Gryllus. The Homeric Tradition of Transformations As narrated in The Odyssey, Homer’s Circe episode emphasizes the disparity between the mental abilities of humans and animals. Odysseus describes Circe’s transformation of some members of his crew into pigs in the following manner: She struck them with her wand and drove them into her pig pens, and they took on the look of pigs, with the heads and voices 2 Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends, revised edition, vol. 2 of 6 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1955), D100-D199, D0-D699, D682.3, D600-D699. 3 Plutarch’s works re-enter European culture ca. 1400; Homer’s epics begin to circulate widely after the first printed edition of 1488. See Philip H. Young, The Printed Homer: A 3,000 Year Publishing and Translation History of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2003), 79 and 96. 3 and bristles of pigs, but the minds within them stayed as they had been before.4 When Odysseus says that the crew “took on the look of pigs,” he implies that Circe changes the crew’s forms without altering their essential natures. The crew do not become pigs but rather acquire the false appearance of being pigs. Odysseus makes this point explicitly and unambiguously when he says, “the minds within them stayed as they had been / before.” Odysseus imagines the crew’s “minds” as cores of human identity, which survive unaltered beneath the physical exteriors that Circe has transformed. Except for bipedal locomotion, which the above passage neglects to mention, the only human capacity that the crew lose is articulate speech: they now have the “voices”—but emphatically not the “minds”—of pigs. Other ancient versions of the Circe episode tend to follow Homer on this point and even exaggerate the motif of entrapment that already appears in the transformations of Homer’s Circe. Although Homer’s Circe keeps the transformed crew in “pig pens,” their physical confinement pales in comparison with their mental confinement, their inability to articulate their enduringly human thoughts or to participate fully in human community.5 In Virgil’s brief treatment of Circe in book 7 of The Aeneid, the poet describes Circe’s island as Aeneas sails by: Groans can be heard, and roars of angry lions Fighting against their chains in the late hours, 4 Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), page 158, lines 238-41. Subsequent citations appear in text by page and line number. 5 Yarnall makes a related