ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the partridge without moralization. Medieval literature is not known for verisimilitude or originality. The intertextual connections of modern texts can be implicit and unmarked, masked by the convention of independent authorial agency. The bestiary’s metaphoric structure is simpler than the dense exegetical networks in Physiologus. An instance of moderate tension between a creature and the corresponding doctrine is the bestiary fox, which circles in and out of its moralization. “On the Partridge II” is among some fifty chapters in the Second-family bestiary that do not draw moralizations from Physiologus; their main source, Isidore’s Etymologies, offers capsule allegories followed by observations. If the animals of Physiologus and bestiaries stand in for material creatures, those in fables represent different though equally material beings, our own species. Robert Henryson’s lamb makes arguments as legalistic and casuistic as the wolf’s, complicating the lamb’s resemblance to innocent victims of human “wolves”.
