Peter Mason, Before Disenchantment. Images of Exotic Animals and Plants in the Early Modern World

The history of the representation of the natural world during the early modern period has received, over the past decades, growing attention from scholars of many different fields: from art history to anthropology, to the history of science and of medicine. Before Disenchantment describes the cultural process which saw, during this period, the development of the representation of the real into the visual and the imaginary dimension, with a special focus on the perception of the American continent – and of its virtual extensions like the Canary Islands, which were formerly believed as in some way belonging to the New World. Although the book lingers over a number of incredible and mostly imaginary phenomena (among the others, readers will be fascinated by the story of the Scottish Tree-goose), it should be underlined that the focus of the author...