Juan Manuel Arias

Juan Manuel Arias

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
B.A. (Literature) Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)
M.A. (Literature) Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)
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Juan's research interests include the transmission and translation of stories and exempla through the Middle Ages; comparative literature and folklore; fables and other animal tales from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period; literary representations of animal cognition; medieval Iberia; medieval theories of language; animal voices in literature.

Juan's current research explores how humans are perceived by literary animals in texts in Spanish, Latin and Catalan from the 13th to the 17th century. In a parallel project, he studies the cultural fascination with textual and non-textual animal collections (from exemplaries to ménageries), and the role of these collections in the development of philosophical and scientific systems of organisation of the living.