2013, No. 2 (5), Genealogies of Culture

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Konrad Bielecki
The Reception of Exotic Creatures and Their Images in Early Modern Europe: The Case of the Indian Rhinoceros

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Keywords: Dürer, rhinoceros, semiophore, natural history, right of participation

Abstract:
In the 15th and 16th centuries, in the era of early geographical discoveries, animals that were increasingly often brought to Europe, which had been unknown or known only from obscure accounts of ancient philosophers, were becoming something more than just curious species of living creatures. Among them, the animal that deserves special attention is the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), which aroused not only considerable interest but also consternation of naturalists at the time and in years to come. The uniqueness of the specimen is emphasised by the very well-known wood engraving by Albrecht Dürer, depicting the animal in great detail. This work places the rhinoceros in a certain symbolic convention which influenced the way it was perceived in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. This paper is an attempt to interpret the image of the animal in the categories of a carrier of meanings exceeding what is experienced visually. Using the category of participation created by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the author places the rhinoceros in a multi-layer order of reality, similar to the category of semiophore created by Krzysztof Pomian. Such an approach, which assumes looking for a deeper, metaphorical message carried by the rhinoceros, demonstrates that exotic creatures in the 16th century were perceived not so much as natural curiosities but as a kind of references to other, peripheral worlds. These peripheries had long been imagined as legendary, magical places, which therefore filled the gap in the unity of the world, as the space for all that is inexplicable.

About Author:
BIELECKI KONRAD – historian, PhD student in the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences.