Literature is full of talking animals, from modern works like Paddington to Middle English works like The Owl and The Nightingale. But why do writers create non-speaking animals that speak? And why employ animals in literature at all?

In this episode of OxPods, English Language and Literature undergraduate Chloe Smith interviews Dr Eleanor Parker, a Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford, whose research focuses on literature in England in the centuries before and after the Norman Conquest. They discuss how Mediaeval poets wrote about animals and how understanding human-animal dynamics can influence how we treat our planet in the present.