“The Human Pigs of Chaucer’s Former Age” (Karl Steel)
Chaucer’s “Former Age” terms the acorns eaten by its vegetarian subjects “mast, hawes, and swich pounage” (7) and “mast or apples” (37): their food is pig food. For Chaucer’s ascetics to eat mast and pannage may point to their gentleness; or to the difficulties of life without government and commerce; but it also suggests another result for humans who live meatlessly: namely, that having abdicated their human responsibility to dominate animals, they have lost their human protections and become as vulnerable as pigs to the appetites of properly carnivorous humans. I will advance this reading by situating Chaucer’s “Former Age” within discourses about pig anatomy and various polemical medieval works about meat-eating and especially the consumption of pigs. My aim is to treat both the animality of humans and efforts by humans to distinguish themselves from all other animals.