Pdf / English / 1977 / 215 pages / 29.5 MB

by Rudiger Robert Beer
translated by Charles M. Stern

Though it never roamed the earth, the unicorn has fascinated both storyteller and artist for thousands of years. How and where was this beast of fable created? What contrasting beliefs has it symbolized? What needs did it fulfill for those who believed in it ? What was it supposed to have looked like? (The single horn was variously thought to curve as well as to grow straight out; to issue from the nose as well as the forehead).
This lavishly illustrated history, the result of over a decade of research, reveals much that is surprising: the existence of the unicorn was so rooted in Grecian culture, for instance, that even Aristotle developed a theory about the singularity of the horn. The author traces the unicorn's first appearances in Europe, centuries before the birth of Christ, to its arrival in The Cloisters in New York and into the pages of twentieth-century poetry books.