IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001421605

Bien Manger, Bien Mangé: Edible Reciprocity in Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (2014)

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
Volume: 14, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 107-135
Publication date: 2014
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Travel; exploration Science and literature Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Animals in literature Colonialism Humanism Natural history Early modern Brazil Lery, Jean de

In his Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil [History of a voyage to the land of Brazil], the French Protestant Jean de Léry gives an ambivalent account of his journey: he recalls with loathing the violent strangeness of the New World, but he also pines for Brazil and the indigenous Tupinamba hosts that he left behind. Drawing on a framework of critical animal studies, this essay reads Léry's early modern travel narrative as an exploratory alternative to human exceptionalism, particularly to the complex of colonial, masculine, and carnivorous forces of domination that bolster humanist subjectivity (what Derrida calls carno-phallogocentrism). In Léry's narration, existing alimentary categories constantly threaten to collapse; the categories of eating subject and eaten object are perpetually unfixed. This essay traces the fears and desires that accompany the radical interchangeability of eater and eaten. Léry's text proposes an unsettled, unsettling subjectivity that is fascinated by its own vulnerability to consumption and attentive to the horror and pleasure of all manner of eating practices. This alternative subjectivity suggests the basis of an ethical project akin to Derrida's rule of “eating well”---a practice of openness to reciprocal encounter with both human and animal others.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001421605

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Thesis Cagle, Hubert Glenn, III; (2011)
Dead Reckonings: Disease and the Natural Sciences in Portuguese Asia and the Atlantic, 1450--1650 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567296/)

Book Householder, Michael; (2011)
Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery: Narratives of Encounter (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201653/)

Article Kelley, Shannon; (2014)
The King's Coral Body: A Natural History of Coral and the Post-Tragic Ecology of The Tempest (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421599/)

Book Maifreda, Germano; (2012)
From Oikonomia to Political Economy: Constructing Economic Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201675/)

Chapter Moudarres, Andrea; (2012)
The Geography of the Enemy: Old and New Empires between Humanist Debates and Tasso's Gerusalemme liberate (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201661/)

Article Nina Vieira; Cristina Brito; (2017)
Brazilian manatees (re)discovered: Early modern accounts reflecting the overexploitation of aquatic resources and the emergence of conservation concerns (/p/isis/citation/CBB943089890/)

Book Jaime Marroquín Arredondo; Ralph Bauer; (2019)
Translating Nature: Cross-Cultural Histories of Early Modern Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB895561865/)

Article William Eamon; (2018)
Corn, Cochineal, and Quina: The “Zilsel Thesis” in a Colonial Iberian Setting (/p/isis/citation/CBB085994099/)

Chapter Warren, Adam; (2013)
From Natural History to Popular Remedy: Animals and Their Medicinal Applications among the Kallawaya in Colonial Peru (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422676/)

Chapter Tortorici, Zeb; Few, Martha; (2013)
Writing Animal Histories (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422672/)

Book Carey, Daniel; (2012)
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421379/)

Article Stouraiti, Anastasia; (2013)
Talk, Script and Print: The Making of Island Books in Early Modern Venice (/p/isis/citation/CBB001202085/)

Article Sallas, Ana Luisa Fayet; (2010)
Narrativas e imagens dos viajantes alemães no Brasil do século XIX: a construção do imaginário sobre os povos indígenas, a história e a nação (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420459/)

Article Rosanna Dent; (2023)
Stolen Masks (/p/isis/citation/CBB278637491/)

Book Helmrath, Johannes; Schirrmeister, Albert; Schlelein, Stefan; (2013)
Historiographie des Humanismus: Literarische Verfahren, soziale Praxis, geschichtliche Räume (/p/isis/citation/CBB985244331/)

Article Sequeira Fernandes, Antonio Carlos; Pereira, Ricardo; Carvalho, Ismar de Souza; Azevedo, Débora de Almeida; (2011)
O âmbar de Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão: um registro equivocado (/p/isis/citation/CBB001212029/)

Article Scott Berthelette; (2020)
New France and the Hudson Bay Watershed: Transatlantic Networks, Backcountry Specialists, and French Imperial Projects in Post-Utrecht North America, 1713–29 (/p/isis/citation/CBB752642294/)

Book Starbuck, Nicole; (2013)
Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201503/)

Book Alain Asselin; Jacques Cayouette; Jacques Mathieu; (2014)
Curieuses histoires de plantes du Canada (/p/isis/citation/CBB427353074/)

Book Igler, David; (2013)
The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201479/)