Natural History in Early Modern France: The Poetics of an Epistemic Genre

308 Pages·2018·6.037 MB·English

by  Raphaële Garrod, Paul J. Smith (ed.)

Natural History in Early Modern France
Intersections
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
General Editor
Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de)
Editorial Board
W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)
W. de Boer (Miami University)
Chr. Göttler (University of Bern)
J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen)
W.S. Melion (Emory University)
R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
P.J. Smith (University of Leiden)
J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast)
A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
C. Zittel (University of Stuttgart)
C. Zwierlein (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg)
VOLUME 58 – 2018
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte
Natural History
in Early Modern France
The Poetics of an Epistemic Genre
Edited by
Raphaële Garrod
Paul J. Smith
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau Herborizing’. Print by Georg Friedrich Meyer (1778). Wikimedia
Commons.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garrod, Raphaële, editor. | Smith, P. J. (Paul J.), editor.
Title: Natural history in early modern France : the poetics of an epistemic
 genre / edited by Raphaële Garrod, Paul J. Smith.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018] | Series: Intersections:
 Interdisciplinary studies in early modern culture, ISSN 1568-1181 ;
 Volume 58 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018026506 (print) | LCCN 2018033396 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004375703 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004375697 (hardback :
 alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Natural history—France—History.
Classification: LCC QH147 (ebook) | LCC QH147 .N34 2018 (print) |
 DDC 508.4409/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026506
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1568-1181
ISBN 978-90-04-37569-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-37570-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Figures and Tables viii
Notes on the Editors x
Notes on the Contributors xi
1 Introduction. Knowledge and Literature: The Natural-Historical
Description as Epistemic Genre? 1
Raphaële Garrod
2 Deux recueils d’illustrations ornithologiques : les Icones avium
(1555 et 1560) de Conrad Gessner et les Portraits d’oyseaux (1557)
de Pierre Belon 18
Paul J. Smith
3 Feeling Divine Nature: Natural History, Emotions and Bernard Palissy’s
Knowledge Practice  46
Susan Broomhall
4 L’idée d’un oiseau : l’oiseau de paradis ou la fabrication d’une merveille
(XVIe et XVIIe siècles) 70
Arlette Fruet
5 Du nouveau sur la licorne : le rôle des cabinets de curiosités dans
l’avancée des savoirs 88
Myriam Marrache-Gouraud
6 The Natural-Historical Rejuvenation of Emblematics: The Moral
Pedagogy of Nicolas Caussin’s Polyhistor Symbolicus 120
Raphaële Garrod
7 Natural History and Divertissement: J.B. Faultrier’s Traitté general des
oyseaux (1660) 140
Isabelle Charmantier
8 At the Borders of the Metropolis: Writing the Natural History of Paris in
the Eighteenth Century 161
Stéphane Van Damme
vi Contents
9 Rewriting Bacon’s Natural History: Pierre Amboise’s Translation of
Sylva Sylvarum 180
Dana Jalobeanu
10 Bacon, Experimental Philosophy and French Enlightenment Natural
History 205
Peter R. Anstey
11 La permanence des savoirs antiques dans l’histoire naturelle du second
XVIIIe siècle 241
Stéphane Schmitt
12 Empiricism and Sensibility in the Australian Journal of Théodore
Leschenault de La Tour (1800-1803) 263
Paul Gibbard
Index Nominum 291
Acknowledgements
This volume was long in the making. Its draft has travelled from Cambridge to
the University of Western Australia and back. The editorial work was carried
out with the support of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence
for the History of Emotions (project number CE110001011) and of the project
‘Genius before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science’ fund-
ed by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no 617391.
This book stemmed from an enthusiastic moment ‘In defence of Pliny’ with
Rowan Tomlinson, whose has spent the past decade researching the early
modern reception of Pliny in particular and Renaissance copia in general. Pliny
was not merely the inaccurate source of fanciful information on the natural
world, his disfigured text did not only vindicate the humanist condemnation
of the carelessness of medieval scribes; it was also a poetic matrix and that
needed to be said. We tried to say so in September 2012 at a conference on The
Poetics and Epistemology of Natural History in Early Modern France / Poétique
et épistémologie de l’histoire naturelle en France, hosted by Newnham college,
where I was then a junior research fellow: I am very grateful to Newnham col-
lege for its support.
Most articles in this volume developed from papers given at this conference:
I wish to thank all the conference contributors and participants, including
Kathryn Murphy, who kindly suggested that Intersections would be a natural
home for it. I am also grateful to contributors who agreed to board ship at a
later stage: Myriam Marrache-Gouraud, Stéphane Schmitt, and my colleagues
at the University of Western Australia, Sue Broomhall and Paul Gibbard.
For providing insightful comments over the past five years, I wish to thank
Yasmin Haskell, Katrina O’Loughlin, Penelope Woods and Spencer Young
in Perth, Tim Chesters, Alexander Marr, José Ramon Marcaida, and Richard
Oosterhoff in Cambridge, Neil Kenny, Arlette Fruet and Bryn Garrod wherever
I go.
Raphaële Garrod
Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Guêpier. Gessner Conrad, Historiae animalium liber III., qui est
de avium natura (Zürich, Christoph Froschauer: 1555) 576.
From: http://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/pageview/2120628 23
2.2 Oiseaux. Gessner Conrad, Icones […] (Zürich, Christoph
Froschauer: 1555) 49. Zentralbibliothek Zürich.
From: http://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/pageview/1457476 25
2.3 Oiseaux. Gessner Conrad, Icones […] (Zürich, Christoph Froschauer: 1560) 49.
Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Exemplaire personnel de Gessner.
From: http://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/pageview/528248 26
2.4 Guêpier. Gessner Conrad, Icones […] (Zürich, Christoph Froschauer: 1560) 98.
Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Exemplaire personnel de Gessner.
From: http://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/pageview/528297 27
2.5 Effraie. Belon Pierre, Portraicts d’oyseaux […] (Paris, Jérôme de Marnef: 1618).
Fol. 26v. BIU Santé, Paris 31
2.6 Engoulevent. Belon Pierre, Portraicts d’oyseaux […] (Paris, Jérôme de Marnef:
1618). Fol. 26v. BIU Santé, Paris 33
2.7 Cane à quatre pieds. Belon Pierre, Portraicts d’oyseaux […] (Paris, Jérôme de
Marnef: 1618). Fol. 28r. BIU Santé, Paris 34
2.8 Phénix. Belon Pierre, Portraicts d’oyseaux […] (Paris, Jerome de Marnef: 1618).
BIU Santé, Paris 36
2.9 Phénix. Woodcut printer’s device or emblem used by Gabriele
Giolito de’ Ferrari e Fratelli in: Pantera Giovani Antonio,
Monarchia del Nostro Signore (Venice, Giolito: 1552).
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giolito_phoenix_1552.jpg 37
2.10 Corbeau. Guéroult Guillaume, Second livre de la description des
animaux, contenant le blason des oyseaux (Lyon, B. Arnoullet: 1550) 2.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Arsenal, 8-BL-11101 (2).
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1043497w/f23.item.r=%
22oyseaux%22.zoom 39
2.11 Corbeau. Belon Pierre, Portraicts d’oyseaux […] (Paris, Jérôme de Marnef: 1618).
Fol. 67v. BIU Santé, Paris 40
4.1 Paradisea vel paradisi avis. Gessner Conrad, Historiae animalium liber III., qui
est de avium natura (Zürich, Christoph Froschauer: 1555) 612. BIU Santé,
Paris 71
Figures and Tables ix
5.1 Worm Ole, Museum Wormianum, seu Historia rerum rariorum (Leyde, Jean,
Louis et Daniel Elzevir : 1655) frontispice. D.R. 94
5.2 Worm Ole, Museum Wormianum, seu Historia rerum rariorum (Leyde, Jean,
Louis et Daniel Elzevir : 1655), détail du frontispice. D.R. 102
5.3 Unicorn horn with skull. Worm Ole, Museum Wormianum, seu Historia rerum
rariorum (Leyde, Jean, Louis et Daniel Elzevir : 1655) 283. D.R. 103
5.4 Unicorn skull (two sides). Worm Ole, Museum Wormianum, seu Historia rerum
rariorum (Leyde, Jean, Louis et Daniel Elzevir : 1655) 284. D.R. 104
5.5 Unicorn horn without skull. Worm Ole, Museum Wormianum, seu Historia
rerum rariorum (Leyde, Jean, Louis et Daniel Elzevir : 1655) 285. D.R. 105
5.6 Narwal, sauvages, bateau. La Peyrère Isaac de, Relation du Groenland
(Paris, Augustin Courbé : 1647) n.p. Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Gallica 105
5.7 “De la licorne”. Pomet Pierre, Le Marchand syncere, ou Histoire générale des
drogues (Paris, Jean-Baptiste Loyson et Augustin Pillon : 1694),

2ndepartie, liv. I, ch. II, p. 9. Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Gallica 114
5.8 “Du Narwal”. Pomet Pierre, Le Marchand syncere, ou Histoire générale
des drogues (Paris, Jean-Baptiste Loyson et Augustin Pillon : 1694),

2ndepartie, liv. I, ch. XXXIII, p. 78. Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Gallica 115
7.1 J.B. Faultrier’s Traitté general des oyseaux (1660): cover and binding,
with Fouquet’s coat of arms. Licence granted courtesy of the Rt Hon. The Earl
of Derby 2013 (Photo T.R. Birkhead) 141
Tables
2.1 Interdépendances textuelles et picturales entre Belon et Gessner 22
2.2 Les classifications des oiseaux proposées par Belon et Gessner 28
10.1 The Structure of Natural History according to Bacon 209
Notes on the Editors
Raphaële Garrod
is associate professor of early modern French at the University of Oxford and
a fellow of Magdalen College. She works at the intersections of literature and
intellectual history in early modern France and Europe.
Raphaële Garrod is the author of Cosmographical Novelties in Renaissance
French Prose: Dialectic and Discovery (1575-1630) (2016), and the co-author
with Alexander Marr, José Ramon Marcaida and Richard Oosterhoff, of
Logodaedalus: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe (forthcom-
ing). She is the co-editor, with Yasmin Haskell, of Changing Heart: Performing
Jesuit Emotions in Europe, Asia and the Americas (2018), and the editor of a
forthcoming volume on Descartes and Ingenium.
Paul J. Smith
is Professor of French literature at Leiden University. His research focuses on
16th, 17th, and 20th century French literature, its reception in the Netherlands,
French and Dutch fable and emblem books, literary rhetoric and intermedial-
ity. He has also published on animal symbolism and early modern zoology, and
its presence in art and literature. His main book publications include Voyage et
écriture. Etude sur le Quart Livre de Rabelais (1987), Het schouwtoneel der dieren.
Embleemfabels in de Nederlanden (1567-ca. 1670) (2006), Dispositio. Problematic
Ordering in French Renaissance Literature (2007), and Réécrire la Renaissance,
de Marcel Proust à Michel Tournier. Exercices de lecture rapprochée (2009) He
is co-author of Francis Ponge: lectures et méthodes (2004), editor of Editer et
traduire Rabelais à travers les âges (1997), Translating Montaigne (2011) and co-
editor of Lectures de René Char (1990), Fabuleux La Fontaine (1996), Le paradoxe
en linguistique et en littérature (1996), Montaigne and the Low Countries (1580-
1700) (2007), Early Modern Zoology. The Construction of Animals in Science,
Literature and the Visual Arts (2007), and Emblems and the Natural World (2017).
He is member of the editorial board of Intersections, Neophilologus, Montaigne
Studies, and Renaissance and Reformation.