| Popis: |
On the Animal’s dignity and excellence. Are the fairytale’s motives an alternative to “Man as a miracle of Nature”’s topoi ?The discourse on dignitas hominis and the steretotypes dealing with Man as a “terrestrial God”, a truely miracle of Nature compared to beasts created only to serve him, are gaining such ground all along the 16th Century that it becomes the major philosophical argument on which Descartes’s ideas will take root in the following century. Nevertheless, at the time Montaigne considers such topoi with a skeptical and wistful gaze in his “Apologie de Raimond Sebond”, in the same way the fairytale tradition emerging in Early Modern Europe shows some representations able to question Man’s prerogatives. Medieval stories like “Canis” (in the Dolopathos book) which echoes remote narratives full of oriental wisdom, some Straparola’s tales like “Fortunio” or “Il Re Porco” (King Pig), Basile’s “Cagliuso” emphasize topics such as metamorphosis, the helpful animal, human ungratefulness. In such tales, we can hear a dissonant voice compared to the hegemonic discourse coming from the Jewish and Christian tradition. In some way, the reader is led now to question the border between Man and Animal, to reconsider the proposition of the moral superiority of Man. |
