‘Medieval Bestiary: Book of Poems’

A Medieval Bestiary is an encyclopedia of animals put together during the Middle Ages, usually focussing on each animal’s meaning and morals. My group members and I decided to research this world of medieval beasts and learn what we could about their historical symbolism. We scoured through old tales and papers and put together a long script of what we discovered. Our findings included exciting and descriptive stories filled with oddities, terrors, and morals. Some of the creatures we looked at included dragons, phoenixes, sirens, and more! To make the writing more engaging, we paired each context with a poem about the most important pieces of each beast. The poem's goal was to summarize the lessons and information from the context in a fun way.

The next part of our project was to figure out how to share the information we had collected with everyone else. We didn’t want to limit this work to a two-dimensional formal report, so we brainstormed ways to bring it to life. Our idea was to combine the words into a physical copy of the poems, pictures, and information we worked hard to bring together. To do this, we assembled and bound a book with all the animals together. We tried to imitate the limited resources that they would have in the Middle Ages while putting this together. Our end product exceeded our vision: we finished with a book bound with aged fabric and twine containing animal poems and history on old paper. Our Medieval Bestiary!

Mackinley Szumlanski