Parish Helen
Department of History, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AH, UK.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Nov 3;10(11):2024. doi: 10.3390/ani10112024.
The pages of early modern natural histories expose the plasticity of the natural world, and the variegated nature of the encounter between human and animal in this period. Descriptions of the flora and fauna reflect this kind of negotiated encounter between the world that is seen, that which is heard about, and that which is constructed from the language of the sacred text of scripture. The natural histories of Greenland that form the basis of this analysis exemplify the complexity of human-animal encounters in this period, and the intersections that existed between natural and unnatural, written authority and personal testimony, and culture, belief, and ethnography in natural histories. They invite a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which animals and people interact in the making of culture, and demonstrate the contribution made by such texts to the study of animal encounters, cultures, and concepts. This article explores the intersection between natural history and the work of Christian mission in the eighteenth century, and the connections between personal encounter, ethnography, history, and oral and written tradition. The analysis demonstrates that European natural histories continued to be anthropocentric in content and tone, the product of what was believed, as much as what was seen.
早期现代自然史的篇章揭示了自然世界的可塑性，以及这一时期人类与动物相遇的多样化本质。对动植物的描述反映了在所见世界、所闻之事与从圣经神圣文本语言构建出来的内容之间的这种协商性相遇。构成此次分析基础的格陵兰自然史例证了这一时期人类与动物相遇的复杂性，以及自然与非自然、书面权威与个人证词、自然史中的文化、信仰与民族志之间存在的交叉点。它们促使人们更细致入微地理解动物与人类在文化形成过程中互动的方式，并展示了此类文本对动物相遇、文化和概念研究的贡献。本文探讨了18世纪自然史与基督教传教工作之间的交叉点，以及个人相遇、民族志、历史与口头和书面传统之间的联系。分析表明，欧洲自然史在内容和语气上仍然以人类为中心，是信仰之物与所见之物共同作用的产物。
