Description
Book SynopsisThis work provides an account of the existence of New World cannibalism and the images it conjured up for Europeans from the Renaissance to the 19th century. It describes the symbolic uses of cannibalism by authors, political theorists and theologians throughout the period.
Trade Review"Frank Lestringant's
Cannibals is a magisterial, 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
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations.
Introduction: To Meet a Cannibal.
Part I: From Dog-heads to Man-eaters: .
1. Birth of the Cannibal.
2. The Cannibal á la mode.
3. The Cannibal Comes to France.
4. Brazil, Land of Cannibals.
Part II: In Search of the Honourable Cannibal: .
5. The First Ethnographer of the Tupinamba Indians.
6. Jean de Léry, or the Cannibal Obsession.
7. The Melancholy Cannibal.
8. The Spitting Cannibal.
Part III: Cannibals by Constraint: .
9. Cardano, or the Rule of Necessity.
10. Brébeuf and Robinson: The Missionary and the Colonist.
11. The Enlightenment Cannibal: from Bougainville to Voltaire.
12. Cruel Nature: De Pauw and Sade.
13. Cannibalism and Colonialism: Jules Verne.
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.
