1668: The Year of the Animal in France
()
About this ebook
Peter Sahlins’s brilliant new book reveals the remarkable and understudied “animal moment” in and around 1668 in which authors (including La Fontaine, whose Fables appeared in that year), anatomists, painters, sculptors, and especially the young Louis XIV turned their attention to nonhuman beings.
At the center of the Year of the Animal was the Royal Menagerie in the gardens of Versailles, dominated by exotic and graceful birds. In the remarkable unfolding of his original and sophisticated argument, Sahlins shows how the animal bodies of the menagerie and others (such as the dogs and lambs of the first xenotransfusion experiments) were critical to a dramatic rethinking of governance, nature, and the human.
The animals of 1668 helped to shift an entire worldview in France — what Sahlins calls Renaissance humanimalism — toward more modern expressions of Classical naturalism and mechanism. In the wake of 1668 came the debasement of animals and the strengthening of human animality, including in Descartes’s animal-machine, highly contested during the Year of the Animal.
At the same time, Louis XIV and his intellectual servants used the animals of Versailles to develop and then to transform the symbolic language of French absolutism. Louis XIV came to adopt a model of sovereignty after 1668 where his absolute authority is represented in manifold ways with the bodies of animals and justified by the bestial nature of his human subjects.
1668: The Year of the Animal in France explores and reproduces the king’s animal collections — in printed text, weaving, poetry, and engraving, all seen from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Sahlins brings the animals of 1668 together and to life as he observes them critically in their native habitats — within the animal palace itself by Louis Le Vau, the paintings and tapestries of Charles Le Brun, the garden installations of André Le Nôtre, the literary work of Charles Perrault and the natural history of his brother Claude, the poetry of Madeleine de Scudéry, the philosophy of René Descartes, the engravings of Sébastien Leclerc, the trans_fusion experiments of Jean Denis, and others.
The author joins the non_human and human agents of 1668 — panthers and painters, swans and scientists, weasels and weavers — in a learned and sophisticated treatment that will engage scholars and students of early modern France and Europe and readers broadly interested in the subject of animals in human history.
Peter Sahlins
Peter Sahlins is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
Related to 1668
Related ebooks
Elephant Slaves & Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Prosthetic Tongue: Printing Technology and the Rise of the French Language Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Labor of the Mind: Intellect and Gender in Enlightenment Cultures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFloridoro: A Chivalric Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeeling Time: Duration, the Novel, and Eighteenth-Century Sensibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRuan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLaura Battiferra and Her Literary Circle: An Anthology: A Bilingual Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poetry and Prose: A Bilingual Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Urania: A Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCompassion's Edge: Fellow-Feeling and Its Limits in Early Modern France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsItalian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnimals and Other People: Literary Forms and Living Beings in the Long Eighteenth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking Ideas Visible in the Eighteenth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLes Fleurs animées Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsServants and the Gothic, 1764-1831: A half-told tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurprise: The Poetics of the Unexpected from Milton to Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecollecting Lotte Eisner: Cinema, Exile, and the Archive Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLuminous presence: Derek Jarman's life-writing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Self and It: Novel Objects in Eighteenth-Century England Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deborah and Her Sisters: How One Nineteenth-Century Melodrama and a Host of Celebrated Actresses Put Judaism on the World Stage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrench Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 1: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Volume 1: 1907-1929 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsZayde: A Spanish Romance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Moliere: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Art For You
Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creative, Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Draw and Paint Anatomy, All New 2nd Edition: Creating Lifelike Humans and Realistic Animals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Draw Like an Artist: 100 Flowers and Plants Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Living: The Classical Mannual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art 101: From Vincent van Gogh to Andy Warhol, Key People, Ideas, and Moments in the History of Art Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Essential Guide to Creating Action Figures & Fantastical Forms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Botanical Drawing: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing Flowers, Vegetables, Fruit and Other Plant Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Designer's Dictionary of Color Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Erotic Photography 120 illustrations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drawing School: Fundamentals for the Beginner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for 1668
0 ratings0 reviews