A Sport for Gentle Bloods

Le présent article envisage à nouveaux frais les liens entre le traité sur la chasse de George Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie (1575) et Comme il vous plaira (1598) de Shakespeare. Contrairement à l’idée selon laquelle ces œuvres préfigurent la sensibilité moderne aux droits des animaux, il s’agit de les comprendre à l’aune de relation inter-espèces plus anciennes et moins souples. Cette perspective plus datée, conformément à la doctrine du péché originel, voit l’humanité déchue naturellement encline à la prédation et au conflit et inapte par constitution aux pratiques pacifiques. Aussi les sentiments anti-cynégétiques attribués au Duc aîné dans Comme il vous plaira invoquent-ils un idéal d’harmonie édénique semblable aux mises en scène des divertissements royaux composés par Gascoigne et d’autres pour la reine Élisabeth (dont il a été démontré qu’ils représentaient une source majeure de la langue de la comédie shakespearienne). À l’inverse, Jaques assimile les mêmes sentiments anti-cynégétiques au registre de la satire, marquant ainsi leur éloignement de la réalité. Dans la pièce, l’ensemble des réponses opposées au réel (l’utopie et la satire, l’idéalisation et l’accusation) trouvent à s’exprimer dans le double spectacle final, le masque pour le mariage de Rosalinde et la procession charivaresque de Jaques, les deux étant réunis en une sorte de discordia concors. Dans cette harmonie de contrastes, l’utopie comme la satire rejettent la possibilité d’un comportement idéal dans l’ici et maintenant. Le traité de Gascoigne, de la même façon, repousse à la marge ses sentiments anti-cynégétiques en les présentant sous forme d’exercices versifiés, liminaires et cosmétiques, soit plutôt rhétoriques que réels. Reléguant la sympathie inter-espèces au domaine de l’inaccessible et du prélapsaire, Gascoigne et Shakespeare tranchent dans le sens d’une vision du monde d’après la chute qui serait éthiquement et écologiquement irréparable. Peut-être ne faut-il pas voir comme une coïncidence le fait que ce monde préfigure l’environnement qui caractérise des pièces plus tardives telles que Le Roi Lear ou Macbeth.This paper revisits the relationship between George Gascoigne’s Noble Arte of Venerie (1575) and Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1598). In the process it argues against the currently popular tendency to read these works as augurs of the modern animal-rights sensibility, preferring to understand them instead as expressions of an older and less accommodating sense of inter-species relations. This older view, consistent with the doctrine of original sin, understands fallen humanity as given by nature to predation and strife, constitutionally unsuited to the practice of peace. Thus Duke Senior’s anti-hunting sentiments in As You Like It invoke an ideal of paradisal harmony like that staged in the courtly entertainments composed by Gascoigne and others for Queen Elizabeth—these being, it has been argued, a major source for the language of Shakespeare’s play. By contrast, Jaques assimilates the same anti-hunting sentiments to the register of satire, marking in the process their distance from reality. Within As You Like It, these responses to the real—the utopian and the satirical, the idealizing and the accusatory—find expression in twin concluding spectacles: Rosalind’s wedding-masque and Jaques’ charivari-procession, the two uniting in a kind of discordia concors. In their contrasting harmony, utopia and satire alike reject the possibility of ideal behavior in the here and now; likewise, Gascoigne’s Noble Arte marginalizes its anti-hunting sentiments by casting them in the form of verse exercises, liminal and cosmetic, rhetorical rather than actual. By together placing inter-species sympathy in the realm of the unattainable and prelapsarian, Gascoigne and Shakespeare commit themselves to a vision of the fallen world as both ethically and ecologically unredeemable. Perhaps not by coincidence, this world anticipates the environment in which later Shakespearean plays like King Lear and Macbeth unfold

Com o diabo no corpo: os terríveis papagaios do Brasil colônia

Desde a Antiguidade, papagaios, periquitos e afins (Psittacidae) fascinaram os europeus por seu vivo colorido e uma notável capacidade de interação com seres humanos. A descoberta do Novo Mundo nada faria além de acrescentar novos elementos ao tráfico de animais exóticos há muito estabelecido pelos europeus com a África e o Oriente. Sem possuir grandes mamíferos, a América tropical participaria desse comércio com o que tinha de mais atrativo, essencialmente felinos, primatas e aves - em particular os papagaios, os quais eram embarcados em bom número. Contudo, a julgar pelos documentos do Brasil colônia, esses voláteis podiam inspirar muito pouca simpatia, pois nenhum outro animal - exceto as formigas - foi tantas vezes mencionado como praga para a agricultura. Além disso, alguns psitácidas mostravam-se tão loquazes que inspiravam a séria desconfiança de serem animais demoníacos ou possessos, pois só três classes de entidades - anjos, homens e demônios - possuíam o dom da palavra. Nos dias de hoje, vários representantes dos Psittacidae ainda constituem uma ameaça para a agricultura, enquanto os indivíduos muito faladores continuam despertando a suspeita de estarem possuídos pelo demônio. Transcendendo a mera curiosidade, essa crença exemplifica o quão intrincadas podem ser as relações do homem com o chamado “mundo natural”, revelando um universo mais amplo e multifacetado do que se poderia supor a princípio. Nesse sentido, a existência de aves capazes de falar torna essa relação ainda mais complexa e evidencia que as dificuldades de estabelecer o limite entre o animal e o humano se estendem além dos primatas e envolvem as mais inusitadas espécies zoológicas.Since ancient times, parrots and their allies (Psittacidae) have fascinated Europeans by their striking colors and notable ability to interact with human beings. The discovery of the New World added new species to the international exotic animal trade, which for many centuries had brought beasts to Europe from Africa and the Orient. Lacking large mammals, tropical America participated in this trade with its most appealing species, essentially felines, primates and birds - especially parrots - which were shipped in large numbers. It should be noted, however, that at times these birds were not well liked. In fact, according to documents from colonial Brazil, only the ants rank higher than parrots as the animals most often mentioned as agricultural pests. On the other hand, some of these birds were so chatty that people suspected them to be demonic or possessed animals, since only three classes of beings - angels, men and demons - have the ability to speak. Nowadays, several Psittacidae still constitute a threat to agriculture, and the suspicion that extremely talkative birds were demon possessed has also survived. More than a joke or a mere curiosity, this belief exemplifies how intricate man’s relationships with the “natural world” may be. In this sense, the existence of birds that are able to speak adds a further twist to these relationships, demonstrating that the problem of establishing a boundary between the animal and the human does not only involve primates, but also includes some unusual zoological species