History of Botany and Zoology
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The History of the Physiologus in Early Medieval England
The Physiologus is the ancestor of the bestiary a collection of chapters describing animal qualities and behaviours usually with an allegorical meaning which proliferated especially in England in the late Middle Ages. While much scholarly attention has been directed to the bestiary the history of the transmission of the Physiologus has hardly been investigated. Evidence of the circulation of this treatise in the early medieval period is certainly scanty since only two brief versions dating from this period have been preserved one in Old English and another one in Latin. However this monograph shows further proof of the knowledge of the Physiologus in Anglo-Saxon England. It also reveals the relationship of the only two surviving texts and their connection to the main Continental recension of the time. This study therefore demonstrates that the popularity of bestiaries in the later Middle Ages was largely due to the prominence that its predecessor the Physiologus enjoyed in the preceding period.
Bear and Human
Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times, with Emphasis on Northern Europe
Bears have throughout human history been admired and feared by humans in equal measure with an interrelationship between the two species identifiable from pre-modern times through a wealth of material items as well as from cult sites sacral remains images and written sources. This unique interdisciplinary volume draws together sixty-four contributions by experts from across a range of fields in order to shed light on the complex connections between bears and humans in a period extending from the pre-modern into modern times and across an area stretching from England into Russia. From bear biology (represented by work from the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project) and archaeo(zoo)logy to art history and from history of religion to philology the research gathered across this three-volume set explores a wide-range of subjects. Among them are the bear in biology bears and animal agency bear remains in graves and churches the role of bears in religious beliefs (including berserker and bear ceremonialism) bears in literature the philology underpinning why bear is a taboo word and the image of the bear in rock art as well as political iconography up to the present day. Together these wide-ranging but closely thematic texts combine to produce a ground-breaking new work that will prove fundamental in understanding the human connection with this remarkable animal.
Collective Wisdom
Collecting in the Early Modern Academy
This volume analyses how and why members of scholarly societies such as the Royal Society the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Leopoldina collected specimens of the natural world art and archaeology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These scholarly societies founded before knowledge became subspecialised had many common members. We focus upon how their exploration of natural philosophy antiquarianism and medicine were reflected in collecting practice the organisation of specimens and how knowledge was classified and disseminated. The overall shift from curiosity cabinets with objects playfully crossing the domains of art and nature to their well-ordered Enlightenment museums is well known. Collective Wisdom analyses the process through which this transformation occurred and the role of members of these academies in developing new techniques of classifying and organising objects and new uses of these objects for experimental and pedagogical purposes.
Geloion mimēma: studi sulla rappresentazione culturale della scimmia nei testi greci e greco-romani
Comment les Grecs et les Romains ont-ils représenté le singe cet animal qui dans la culture occidentale des deux derniers siècles a surtout incarné de nouvelles possibilités de repenser la relation entre les hommes et les non-humains ? En dehors du paradigme évolutionniste élaboré par Darwin sans les données de la génétique et le dispositif disciplinaire de la primatologie les textes anciens ont construit d’autres représentations culturelles du singe sans le concevoir comme un cousin ou un parent proche avec lequel nous aurions un ancêtre commun.
À travers une analyse philologique rigoureuse des textes anciens des traités savants de la zoologie et la médecine grecques aux élaborations symboliquement plus complexes du théâtre comique ou de la fable cette étude propose une analyse approfondie de la représentation discursive des primates non humains dans la culture antique.
Des questions essentielles pour la compréhension des cultures anciennes - de l’anthropomorphisme des animaux au débat sur l’intelligence des vivants en passant par les élaborations autour de l’importante catégorie de la mimésis - sont abordées selon une approche d’anthropologie historique. Les relations interspécifiques la représentation de l’altérité géographique et culturelle les jugements de valeur exprimés sur les groupes minoritaires et marginaux seront traités à travers la perspective transversale donnée par l’analyse d’une partie spécifique de l’encyclopédie culturelle ancienne à savoir le singe des Anciens.
The Multilingual Physiologus
Studies in the Oldest Greek Recension and its Translations
The Physiologus is an ancient Christian collection of astonishing stories about animals stones and plants that serve as positive or negative models for Christians. Written originally in Greek the Physiologus was translated in ancient times into Latin Armenian Syriac Coptic Ethiopic Georgian Arabic and Old Slavonic. Throughout its transformations and adaptations the Physiologus has never lost its attraction.
The present volume offers an introduction to the significance of the Greek text a new examination of its manuscript tradition and a completely revised state of the art for each of the ancient translations. Two chapters of the Physiologus on the pelican and on the panther are edited in Greek and in each translation. These editions are accompanied by a new English rendering of the edited texts as well as short interpretative essays concerning the two animals.
The volume affords new insights into this fascinating book’s diffusion transmission and reception over the centuries from its composition at the beginning of the third century CE in Alexandria to the end of the Middle Ages and across all regions of the Byzantine Empire the Latin West Egypt and Ethiopia the Middle East the Caucasus and Slavia orthodoxa.
An Old French Herbal (Ms Princeton U.L. Garrett 131)
The earliest Old French herbal in verse here edited for the first time is a surprisingly comprehensive work (3188 octosyllables) based on an eleventh-century Latin treatise 'De viribus herbarum' attributed to a certain 'Macer'. It occupies a significant place in the development of herbals and is an interesting witness to writing in Western France in the thirteenth century and to the unusual syntax and concentrated style of its author. Some one hundred and twenty-five plants are described together with their medicinal uses which cover a remarkable range of ailments. For ease of recognition the sections of text which do not seem to be based on the received text of 'Macer' are printed in italics. Quotations from the principal source and from parallels are given in the notes. This work will be of great value to all those interested in Old French in medieval translation the vernacular transmission of learning and the history of medicine.