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Bestiaries are compendia of animals, often including illustrations to accompany the information, factual or otherwise, about the animals they describe. If you look for them, you’ll find that there are a lot of bestiaries to choose from today. This is interesting considering they first gained popularity in Europe during the Middle Ages.
The J. Paul Getty Museum’s website on The Book of Beasts exhibit of medieval bestiaries explains the genre’s Christian roots in the West. Those early bestiaries “largely focused on each animal’s religious meaning […] offering devotional inspiration as well as entertainment.”
Today, bestiaries often continue with the initial focus on animals, but they can also be about humanity’s relationship to nature, how we conceive of animals, our imaginations and fears, and more. The bestiary form offers contemporary writers an interesting jumping-off point for a tremendous variety of work. For instance, Donika Kelly’s 2016 poetry collection Bestiary: Poems incorporates bestiary-like poems focused on real animals, like whales and swallows, and mythological ones, like mermaids and centaurs, in its exploration of hybridity and the self.
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