English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Drawing from Erica Harth’s work, animal studies, and ecofeminism, I explore the ways in which Scudery engages in the important seventeenth-century debates over animal reason. Her engagement in these debates is significant: it foregrounds the fact that Rene Descartes’s conception of the animal-as-machine was immediately challenged by his contemporaries. In her “Story of Two Chameleons,” Scudery challenges early modern moral and especially scientific representations of the chameleon, which limit our understanding of the chameleon to a figure for negative human qualities or to an object of scientific experimentation. Scudery does so in ways that parallel her career-long vindication of women as elevated beings endowed with reason. Scudery’s ethical stance towards the animal, attributing to it the capacity to reason and establishing a relation of friendship or amitie between the human and non-human animal, disrupts both negative metaphorical moral discourse, on the one hand; and the scientific domination and objectification of the animal exemplified by Claude Perrault’s Anatomical Description , on the other. Her “Story of Two Chameleons” suggests that these creatures are sublime, in the late seventeenth-century sense of “pure,” “refined,” and “elevated.” Through a process of sublimation that, for instance, transforms excrement into musk, an eyeball into a pearl, Scudery metaphorically elevates the status of her chameleons. In effect, Scudery suggests that, just like the human animal, the chameleon can (albeit problematically) dominate its “nature within.” Resumen Inspirandose en la obra de Erica Harth, en los estudios de los animales y en el ecofeminsmo, exploro las formas en que Scudery se involucra en los debates importantes del siglo diecisiete sobre el razonamiento de los animales. Su implicacion en estos debates es significativa: pone en primer plano el hecho de que la idea de Rene Descartes del animal-como-maquina fue inmediatamente cuestionada por sus contemporaneos. En su “Historia de dos camaleones”, Scudery desafia la moral moderna y en especial las representaciones cientificas del camaleon, que limitan nuestro entendimiento del camaleon a una figura para las cualidades humanas negativas, o a un objeto de experimentacion cientifica. Scudery hace esto de forma paralela a su defensa, a lo largo de su carrera, de las mujeres como seres elevados dotados de razonamiento. El posicionamiento etico de Scudery hacia el animal, atribuyendole la capacidad de razonar y estableciendo una relacion de amistad o amitie entre el animal humano y el no-humano, perturba tanto el discurso moral metaforico negativo asi como la dominacion cientifica y la objetificacion del animal ejemplificada por la Descripcion anatomica de Claude Perrault. Su “Historia de dos camaleones” sugiere que estas criaturas son sublimes, en el sentido de “puro”, “refinado” y “elevado” de finales del siglo XVII. Por medio de un proceso de sublimacion que, por ejemplo, transforma el excremento en almizcle, un globo ocular en una perla, Scudery eleva metaforicamente el estatus de sus camaleones. En efecto, Scudery sugiere que, como el animal humano, el camaleon puede (aunque problematicamente) dominar su “naturaleza interior”.

Madeleine de Scudéry’s Animal Sublime, or Of Chameleons // Lo sublime animal de Madeleine de Scudéry, o De los camaleones