Anthropomorphised Beasts and Bestial Men

The figurative language of Addiction Literature is a highly efficient form of shorthand which can convey entire personal histories and narratives in a compact phrase or two. At the core of the premodern metaphorical language of behavioural addiction is a sustained availing of the allegorical imagery of a dysgenic slide down the ladder of being, from rational and agential human to appetitive and behaviourally compelled beast. Having shown in the previous chapters that highly influential premodern texts availed of the same enduring hoard of figurative language and imagery common to modern Addiction Literature to discuss at length issues of appetite, habit and impaired personal behavioural agency, I hope to uncover a lost way of reading medieval and early modern literary works as examples of Addiction Literature. The main texts examined in this chapter are the fables from the Aesopic tradition, Robert Henryson’s Fables (c. 1470s–1480s), and Shakespeare’s Henriad (1598–1600).