Toucan play: the inception and evolution of the Toucan in the European cultural-biological imagination in the early modern period.

欧洲人对美洲的“发现”构成了近代早期最基本的发展之一。在这一时期，许多人经历了“信息过载”（布莱尔语），与“新世界”的人、风景、植物群和动物群有关的以前未知的事实、图像和故事突然成为欧洲人沉思的对象。在一系列令探险家着迷的新发现的动物物种中，从神秘到古怪，有一种特殊的生物吸引了欧洲人的想象力，并激发了许多不同的表现形式：巨嘴鸟。 从皮埃尔·贝隆（Pierre Belon）和康拉德·根瑟（Conrad Genser）的自然历史纲要，到安德烈·泰韦（André Thevet）的宇宙旅行叙事，以及最终的低地国家（Rubens，Brueghel）的虔诚绘画，巨嘴鸟对当代思想产生了影响，跨越了广泛的流派和媒体。该项目旨在使这种特殊物种的过渡和转型叙事光，并将通过追求研究问题，如：如何在法国和十六世纪以外的文化媒体的巨嘴鸟的代表性比较和发展这样做？巨嘴鸟是如何反映和洞察现代早期不同社会圈子和文化中文本、物体和信息的传递的？巨嘴鸟是如何被欧洲文化生物想象力所恢复的？穿越语言，时间段和表达方式，该项目提供了以跨学科方式综合不同批评观点的机会。认识重新校准的模式是一个在法国学术界已经讨论得很多的主题，从阿特金森和奇纳尔，直到最近的“（后）新历史主义”关于美洲的工作。它既以共存的关键领域为基础，又旨在为这些领域做出贡献。它旨在为围绕新世界的物体和自然历史知识的聚集的英美学术界带来新的见解，以及Wunderkammer现象和西方展览文化的雏形。同样，它旨在促进与开创性的人类学和神学法语奖学金，出现后米歇尔德塞尔托的后结构主义思想的对话。最重要的是，它旨在采用生态批判和动物研究所描绘的批判方法，但尚未充分探索。最初的作品（Boehrer，Fudge和麦肯齐）已经证明了动物在野外工作实践中的重要性，道德问题以及跨越国界的物体和知识交流，但迄今为止在很大程度上限制了对旧世界生物的关注。 对巨嘴鸟的研究通过研究一种新的动物目带来了新的见解，并希望为未来对其他美洲物种的文化生物学研究奠定基础。一种综合的方法，它有可能跨越文学，人类学，历史和神学研究的边界，如这一点，已被采用作为最好的理解叙事本身是零碎的和过渡的手段，这是一个不限于某种格式的主题。巨嘴鸟构成了一个象征性的形象，它可以被视为代表美洲动物，在大发现时期在大西洋上流通的物理对象，而且，至关重要的是，在早期现代欧洲，知识的形式跨越国界和社交圈。

The European 'discovery' of the Americas constitutes one of the most fundamental developments in the early modern period. Contributing significantly to the 'information overload' (Blair) experienced by many in the period, the previously unknown facts, images, and stories pertaining to people, landscapes, flora and fauna of the 'New World' suddenly became available for European contemplation. Amongst the array of newly encountered animal species that fascinated explorers, ranging from the uncanny to the outlandish, one particular creature captivated the European imagination and inspired a multitude of varying representations: the toucan. From the natural-historical compendia of Pierre Belon and Conrad Genser, to the cosmographical travel narratives of André Thevet, and eventually the devotional painting of the Low Countries (Rubens, Brueghel), the toucan had an effect on contemporary thought across a broad gamut of genres and media. This project intends to bring the transitional and transformational narrative of this peculiar species to light, and will do so by pursuing research questions such as: how do representations of the toucan compare and develop across cultural media both in France and beyond in the sixteenth century? How does the toucan reflect, and provide insight into, the transference of text, objects and information in different social circles and cultures in the early modern period? How does the toucan become recuperated by the European cultural-biological imagination? Traversing languages, time periods and means of expression, this project provides the opportunity to synthesise divergent critical perspectives in cross-disciplinary fashion. Modes of epistemic recalibration is a subject already much discussed in French scholarship from Atkinson and Chinard, through to more recent '(post-)new-historicist' work on the Americas. It is both informed by, and aims to contribute to, co-existing critical territories. It seeks to bring a fresh insight into the Anglo-American scholarship surrounding the assemblage of objects and knowledge of natural history in the New World, to the phenomenon of the Wunderkammer and the rudiments of Western exhibitionary culture. Similarly, it seeks to foster dialogues with the path-breaking anthropological and theological francophone scholarship that arose subsequent to the post-structuralist thought of Michel de Certeau. Most significantly, it aims to adopt the critical approach delineated by eco-critical and animal studies but as yet not fully explored. Initial works (Boehrer, Fudge and MacKenzie) have demonstrated the importance of animals in fieldwork practices, questions of morality and the exchange of objects and knowledge across borders, yet have hitherto largely delimited attention to old world creatures. The study of the toucan brings a fresh insight by examining a new order of animal and hopes to lay a foundation upon which future cultural-biological studies of other American species might be carried out. A composite approach, which has the potential to traverse the borders of literary, anthropological, historical and theological research such as this, has been adopted as a means of best understanding a narrative which itself is fragmentary and transitional, and a subject matter which is not restricted to a certain format. The toucan constitutes a symbolic figure, of the American animals which it can be seen to represent, of the physical objects circulating the Atlantic at the time of the Great Discoveries, and, crucially, of the forms of knowledge being conveyed across borders and social circles in early modern Europe.