French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Schnapper, Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe. Les cabinets de curiosités en France au XVIIe siècle (reprint)
History, Politics and Society
Antoine Schnapper, Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe. Les cabinets de curiosités en France au XVIIe siècle
Paris : Flammarion, "Champs arts" series, 2012.
EAN 9782081282636.
Prix 15EUR
768p.
Publisher's description :
This fascinating study presents an overview of the encyclopedic curiosity that underpinned most 17th-century cabinets. Cabinets of curiosities served as a microcosm of the world, represented through its most bizarre and exotic offerings. The prodigious heterogeneity of the collections—Nile crocodiles alongside small gold or silver ancient medals, tulips and hyacinths juxtaposed with a monster's head and an Indian canoe—is but a fully realized expression of an essential trait of European curiosity during the Age of Enlightenment: its openness to all the visible phenomena of the world, whether created by God or by man.
Antoine Schnapper, by examining the French case, reviews the diverse actors of this "Comedy of Curiosity" and shows how deeply rooted old legends remained, explaining the attachment of these collections to objects as strange as unicorn horns, the Rose of Jericho, or giants' teeth. Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe is an essential book for the study of cabinets of curiosities in France, complementing Curieux du Grand Siècle (Champs), a seminal work on 17th-century collectors.
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An article about this work can be read on the nonfiction.fr website:
Cabinets of curiosities represented microcosms of the world through heterogeneous collections of bizarre and exotic offerings, ranging from natural specimens like Nile crocodiles and tulips to artificial items such as ancient medals and Indian canoes. This encyclopedic approach reflected a broader European intellectual tradition concerned with gathering all visible phenomena created by God or man. In this study, Antoine Schnapper focuses specifically on the French context to examine how these collections functioned and who the participants were within this historical movement.
The volume reviews diverse actors involved in collecting and highlights the persistence of traditional lore through objects like unicorn horns, the Rose of Jericho, and giants' teeth. It serves as a companion to earlier research on seventeenth-century collectors. Readers interested in the history of seventeenth-century collecting practices and the intellectual history of the period may find this volume relevant to their inquiries into early modern mentalities and cultural history.