On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ...
This essay takes a material culture approach to the fate of the unicorn, that ultimate symbol of irrationality and credulity, in the natural history collection of the age of Enlightenment. Exploring the interplay between unicorn horns, narwhals, rhinos and other kinds of horn present in the eighteen...
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Oxford University Press (OUP)
2019
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Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.26715 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279337 |
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ftdatacite:10.17863/cam.26715 2024-02-04T10:02:08+01:00 On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... Spary, EC 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.26715 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279337 en eng Oxford University Press (OUP) French literature 1700-1799 Enlightenment prose unicorn mythical creatures animals natural history cabinets of curiosities Article ScholarlyArticle JournalArticle article-journal 2019 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.26715 2024-01-05T16:32:48Z This essay takes a material culture approach to the fate of the unicorn, that ultimate symbol of irrationality and credulity, in the natural history collection of the age of Enlightenment. Exploring the interplay between unicorn horns, narwhals, rhinos and other kinds of horn present in the eighteenth-century French collection, it shows that in fact unicorns never disappeared from the cabinet, but rather presided over new narratives of what Enlightenment was about. Further, it argues that this change in the status of unicorns was associated with changing patterns of the global whaling industry, which made narwhal horns widely available to Europeans, and the narwhal into a natural historical object. What real objects could, or could not, be represented in the collection as specimens had an important bearing upon the credibility of animal kinds outside the space of the cabinet, yet within that space, the juxtaposition and financial value of specimens produced important narratives of the relationship between ... Article in Journal/Newspaper narwhal* DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
French literature 1700-1799 Enlightenment prose unicorn mythical creatures animals natural history cabinets of curiosities |
spellingShingle |
French literature 1700-1799 Enlightenment prose unicorn mythical creatures animals natural history cabinets of curiosities Spary, EC On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
topic_facet |
French literature 1700-1799 Enlightenment prose unicorn mythical creatures animals natural history cabinets of curiosities |
description |
This essay takes a material culture approach to the fate of the unicorn, that ultimate symbol of irrationality and credulity, in the natural history collection of the age of Enlightenment. Exploring the interplay between unicorn horns, narwhals, rhinos and other kinds of horn present in the eighteenth-century French collection, it shows that in fact unicorns never disappeared from the cabinet, but rather presided over new narratives of what Enlightenment was about. Further, it argues that this change in the status of unicorns was associated with changing patterns of the global whaling industry, which made narwhal horns widely available to Europeans, and the narwhal into a natural historical object. What real objects could, or could not, be represented in the collection as specimens had an important bearing upon the credibility of animal kinds outside the space of the cabinet, yet within that space, the juxtaposition and financial value of specimens produced important narratives of the relationship between ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Spary, EC |
author_facet |
Spary, EC |
author_sort |
Spary, EC |
title |
On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
title_short |
On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
title_full |
On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
title_fullStr |
On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
title_full_unstemmed |
On the Ironic Specimen of the Unicorn Horn in Enlightened Cabinets ... |
title_sort |
on the ironic specimen of the unicorn horn in enlightened cabinets ... |
publisher |
Oxford University Press (OUP) |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.26715 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279337 |
genre |
narwhal* |
genre_facet |
narwhal* |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.26715 |
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1789968525701414912 |