The Platypus and the Mermaid: And Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination, by Harriet Ritvo (original) (raw)
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This text was automatically generated on 5 July 2019. Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution-Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale-Pas de Modification 4.0 International.
Marginalni i marginalizovani žanrovu u književnosti, 2022
Although fin-de-siècle culture teemed with novels, poems, short stories and fairy tales about sirens and mermaids, the siren/mermaid genre in literature has never been discussed in its own right. The aim of this paper is, thus, to approach siren/mermaid texts as a distinct genre with clearly discernible characteristics. It gathers up the texts that have previously been considered (if at all) as separate and belonging to other genres, juxtaposes them and reveals the inner motion/ambivalence of their similarities and differences. What becomes apparent are certain conventions most of the authors within the field followed, building upon well-known classical and modern sources, and each adding a personal signature that allowed the genre to constantly change and grow. The literary obsession with sirens and mermaids started in the Victorian 1870s and came to an end during the post-Victorian 1920s. From this point on, although present, their image has lost its obsessive and creative drive that had carried it through the previous decades. The initial spark created by H. P. Paull’s 1872 translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 The Little Mermaid, thoroughly transformed the siren iconography. Building upon the classical Homeric narrative of sirens as vocal enchantresses, Andersen’s story developed a previously unexplored theme: sirens/mermaids as transcendental subjects and protagonists of their own stories.
The platypus: an extraordinary animal for teaching
Conexão Ciência, 2017
In this paper, we intend to understand how the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a paradoxical animal both for an epistemologist and for a science education researcher in science education. Firstly, we’ll expose the historical identification process of this animal. Second, we’ll analyze the content of three storybooks that can be presented to primary school pupils (aged 8-11). The history of the platypus is well known but it reflects many difficulties in morphology, anatomy and classification. Today, some paradoxical characters of the Platypus are investigated from a genetic, genomic or evolutionary viewpoint. But at primary school, is the Platypus, a curiosity and an exception, a good example to show some difficulties of description and classification in biology? In biology education, exceptions are often excluded while the popular science puts. At primary school, mediation is needed to explain classification to pupils. We chose three storybooks about The Platypus. Content analysis of these storybooks focuses the different ways characters classify the Platypus and what arguments they use. These fictional narratives underline the met failures when characters want to classify the Platypus: its similarities with mammals or birds constitute an obstacle to integration in a definite class.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2001
Itinerario, 2017
While a thick vein of scepticism marked Enlightenment thinkers' studies, such investigations cannot be divorced from their concurrent quest to merge the wondrous and the rational. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in philosophers' investigations of merpeople. Examining European gentlemen's debates over mermaids and tritons illuminate their willingness to embrace wonder in their larger quest to understand the origins of humankind. Naturalists utilized a wide range of methodologies to critically study these seemingly wondrous creatures and, in turn, assert the reality of merpeople as evidence of humanity's aquatic roots. As with other creatures they encountered in their global travels, European philosophers utilized various theories-including those of racial, biological, taxonomical, and geographic difference-to understand merpeople's place in the natural world. By the second half of the eighteenth century, certain thinkers integrated merpeople into their explanation of humanity's origins, thus bringing this phenomenon full circle.
From Within Fur and Feathers: Animals in Canadian Literature
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2000
Writing in the Literary History of Canada almost thirty-five years ago, Alec Lucas noted that "nature writing, particularly the animal story, had its hay-day in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has long past. Perhaps the literary vein has been worked out" (1965:404). In retrospect, Lucas's epitaph for animal presences in Canadian literature may be premature; writing in the same volume, no less a luminary than Northrop Frye noted, with no predictions for the genre's demise, "the prevalence in Canada of animal stories, in which animals are closely assimilated to human behaviour and emotions" (343). Indeed, according to Gaile McGregor, any survey of the foundational works of Ernest Thompson Seton and Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and the many animal imaginings offered by recent and contemporary authors reveals that "Canadians are fascinated by animals" (1985: 192). Poets as diverse as Layton, Atwood, Ondaatje,
The Prime Minister and the Platypus: a paradox goes to war
2012
In February 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded that a live duck-billed platypus be sent from Australia to Britain. A vigorous male was shipped off but died shortly before arrival in Britain. This request can only be understood if placed in the context of Churchill’s passion for exotic pets as well as the rich history of aristocratic menageries and live diplomatic gifts. Obtaining an animal hitherto unseen alive in Europe would have been a great zoological achievement for London Zoo and secured British authority in heated historical taxonomical debates. This zoological triumph, coupled with accomplishing an extravagant enterprise in the middle of war-time austerity would have boosted public morale. Most importantly, despite its death, the platypus, served as a token for mediating the soured relations between Australia and Britain. Churchill’s platypus provides a unique case of animal collecting that incorporates effects on international diplomacy and public relations along with a great private eccentricity and passion.