"Animals and Humans in Louis XIV's Paris"

Drawn from her book, The Courtiers’ Anatomists, Anita Guerrini tells the largely overlooked story of seventeenth-century Parisian anatomists who examined both the abandoned human corpses at the Châtelet, and the pampered animals of the king’s menageries. Dissections of both animal and human bodies were spectacles before the King at Versailles and crowds at the King’s Gardens in Paris alike. And from these dissections the Paris Academy of Science’s Claude Perrault edited two folios of remarkable illustrations of exotic animals by the court artists. The symbolic as well as the scientific value of the relationship of these humans and animals forms an undercurrent that flows through early modern life.

Wine and refreshments will be provided during the talk.

Friends of the Rare Book Room are invited to come at 6:00pm to look at selected books with the speaker in the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room prior to the talk. This event is part of our series for Friends. To join the Friends please click here.

Anita Guerrini is Horning Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History at Oregon State University, where she teaches the history of science and medicine. She has written on the history of animals, medicine, food, and the environment. Her most recent book is The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris (Chicago, 2015). Current research projects concern skeletons as scientific and historical objects and the role of history in present-day ecological restoration. She blogs at Anatomia-Animalia.