Towards a Cultural History of Early Modern Ichthyology (1500-1800) (14-16 ottobre 2021)
Fish have always been part and parcel of human civilisation. In a material sense, fish was (and is) omnipresent in our everyday life – from fishery to kitchen. At the same time, fish lead a hidden life, underwater, invisible to man. This paradoxical combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity with aquatic life continues to trigger our fascination, which is manifest not only in fish symbolism, both religious and secular, but also in the European imagery of remote worlds from the Nordic seas to the Far East and tropical West, and in the development of science, from early modern natural history to modern marine biology.
This conference aims to provide a broad spectre of manifestations of human fascination with the aquatic fauna, from 1500 to 1800. It addresses the period’s quickly growing knowledge about fish in its multiple and varied interaction with culture – “fish” understood in the early modern sense of the term, as aquatilia: all aquatic animals, including sea mammals, crustaceans and shells. This topic – the interaction between fish knowledge and culture – will be approached from various perspectives: cultural history, history of science, historical ecology, art history, literary studies, history of collections, among others. Attention will be given to the problematic questions of visual representation, standardized description and classification, and intermediality (word and image, manuscript and print). The conference will also address the transmission of ichthyological knowledge between countries in Europe, and between Europe and the other continents.