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

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.