Albert the Great’s De animalibus and the Organization of the Discourse About Animals in 13th Century
Abstract
Discourse on animals in the 13th century was organized around a certain number of literary genres. Each of them resulted from the transformation of the materials received from Antiquity, embedded an epistemological project and answered to a specific rhetorical demand. Albert the Great’s commentary on De animalibus is taken here as a synthesis between different ways of talking about animals. This paper considers, firstly, how Albert’s De animalibus aims at the articulation of the medical and philosophical discourses on animals. Secondly, in what way Albert solves the problem of the integration of the discourse de natura rerum within the framework of the Aristotelian commentary. The first point is analyzed focusing on the controversies between physicians and philosophers about the origin of the veins, the existence of the female sperm and the ultimate components of the living beings. The second section discusses the way Albert modified Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum in order to include its material into his own commentary.Downloads
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