Cannibals
The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne
1. Auflage April 1997
256 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Frank Lestringant is one of the foremost authorities on European
encounters with the New World. This book is a fascinating account
of the existence of New World cannibalism and the images it
conjured up for Europeans from the Renaissance to the nineteenth
century. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Lestringant
describes how European voyagers, divines and missionaries
encountered the cannibalistic cultures and represented them in
their journals and writings.
Mapping the origins and evolution of the word 'cannibal',
Lestringant describes the symbolic uses of cannibalism by authors,
political theorists and theologians. In a wide-ranging discussion
he surveys the myth and the reality of the cannibal, and explores
the deployment of the image in European literature and legend.
Lestringant argues that sixteenth-century travellers and writers
turned the figure of the man-eating savage of the Americas into a
positive figure, a hero who devoured his defeated enemy in
accordance with custom and not in order to satisfy some cruel
instinct. Two centuries later the philosophers of the Enlightenment
used the figure of the cannibal in their fight against the
colonialists and Catholics. But the positive image of the cannibal
suffered a reversal at the end of the eighteenth century, becoming
a hateful figure and arousing the primitivist dreams of Sade and
Flaubert.
Written in a lively and accessible style, this engaging book will
be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of
discipines - early modern history, European literature,
anthropology and religious studies - as well as anyone interested
in the history of cannibalism.
Introduction: To Meet a Cannibal.
Part I: From Dog-heads to Man-eaters.
Part II: In Search of the Honourable Cannibal.
Part III: Cannibals by Constraint.
Epilogue: The Return of the Cannibal: Swift, Flaubert and the
Medusa.
Appendix I: The Cannibal Speaks: From Montaigne to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
Appendix II: The Cannibal in Canada: Chateaubriand Reads
Montaigne.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index.
wide-ranging, and wonderfully readable exploration of one of the
great Western obsessions. With a blend of horror, astonishment, and
half-suppressed admiration, European travellers, philosophers,
theologians, missionaries and artists have argued for centuries
about the significance of cannibalism. Lestringant's extraordinary
erudition enables him to map an immensely complex territory. His
book is a feast!" Professor Stephen Greenblatt
"A fascinating account of European cannibalism." The
Bookseller
"This is a learned and highly original book. Its virtues lie in
its details, in the dazzling series of connections it makes between
different aspects of cultural history - literary, theological,
economic and artistic. Dare one say, in the words of the Prayer
Book, that there is much here to "read, learn, and inwardly
digest"?" The Sunday Telegraph
"Excellent ... It takes a freshly informed look at the question
of the American Indian, mainly through French rather than Spanish
or British witnesses with whom Anglo-American scholars are more
familiar." Claude Rawson, The Times Literary Supplement
