ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Local Informants and “Eastern European” Knowledge Networks in Gessner’s Publications on the Elk

• In Event: Sciences and the Ideas of Europe: Geographies, Temporalities and Actors

English Abstract

While compiling information on rare and unknown species for his zoological compendia, Conrad Gessner relied on an expansive international network of correspondents, including those in what is now referred to as “Central-Eastern Europe.” While many studies of this region’s history are plagued by presentist post-Cold War paradigms, examining Gessner’s connections with his eastern informants exposes a much more diverse and nuanced understanding of early modern European cultural geography. Based on Gessner’s chapters on the elk (Alces alces), this study examines the relationships between Gessner and his eastern correspondents, his methods of sourcing texts and images, and the vital role his contacts played in supplying his readership with knowledge about this enigmatic species. Gessner’s connections spanned decades, transcended class and religion, questioned binary understandings of specialist vs. non-specialist knowledge, and produced texts and ad vivum woodcuts that would shape zoological discourse on the elk for centuries. Moreover, Gessner’s elk can be read as emblematic of his view of the lands east of Germany, revealing a complex interplay between exoticisation and de-exoticisation, familiarity and otherness, knowable and unknowable.

In addition to centering an oft-neglected region in the history of science, this study considers not only texts but also illustrations supplied by informants. By engaging at the intersection of the histories of science and art, it encourages an interdisciplinary approach to early modern natural history.

This research was conducted as part of the ERC Advanced Grant project “Scholars, Animals, Images, Geographies, and the Arts: De-exoticising Eastern Europe in the Early Modern Period.”

Author

• Christina Anne Stackpole, University of Warsaw