ABSTRACT
The representation of hunting in storytelling began before the written record. It can be seen in cave paintings and featured in the oral traditions of prehistoric cultures. According to Rupert Isaacson, who has interpreted the history and meaning of the hunt for a modern audience, early humans ‘expressed themselves spiritually, aesthetically and emotionally through the animals they hunted and through the hunt itself, celebrating both chase and quarry in rock paintings’. For Isaacson, the hunter provided early humans with ‘sustenance, drama, excitement, fear, awe and reverence’ as well as their ‘first model for the Hero’.1 In classical times, animals, including prey and their pursuers, featured prominently in poems and fables that were subsequently popular with children. In the medieval world, hunting featured in the chronicles and art of the time, reflecting the power and prestige of monarchs and lords. For instance, King Harold is shown hunting in the Bayeux Tapestry. Hunting manuals for the aristocracy started to appear in the fourteenth century, specifying the etiquette required for those nobles with exclusive hunting privileges. Scenes of the chase are described by Malory in Morte d’Arthur and by Chaucer in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Later, sentiment towards animals and against hunting started to appear in the work of Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers, in eighteenth century children’s literature and in the verse of the Romantic poets. With the birth of the modern novel, hunting became a usually positive reflection of the social and sporting traditions of the upper and middle classes.
