"Gesner, Topsell, and the Purpsoses of Pictures in Early Modern Natural Histories" by Katherine Acheson

CITATION: Acheson, Katherine. "Gesner, Topsell, and the Purpsoses of Pictures in Early Modern Natural Histories." Printed Images in Early Modern Britain. Ed. Michael Hunter. Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2010. 127-144. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How do early print illustrations reveal analytical attitudes in naturalist texts?
• Answer: Print illustrations that were re-used or imitated as icons rather than as information.
• Method: Acheson traces the imitation of a single beaver illustration--originally printed in The Historie of the Foure-footed Beastes--and compares the replication of this image in juxtaposition with texts based on original observation.
• Assumptions: Acheson presumes some kind of epistemological continuity between print images and texts.
• Sententiae: "It is evident from these examples that Gesner's works were being used as copy-books from which patterns for the appearance of animals were derived: the use-value of the illustrations, that is, is taken to be the extent to which they could provide a template for reproduction, rather than the extent to which they complemented or supplemented the information provided in the texts they accompanied." (138)

Overstanding

• Assessment: The consequences for this research are understated in this article, which may be necessary due to the small sample size of texts. Nevertheless, the research is rigorous and provocative.
• Synthesis: Acheson treats imitated image from the opposite perspective as Aston and Ingram or Evenden and Freeman: that is, Acheson treats imitated images as a germinal icons for future researchers, rather than as citations establishing authority.
• Application: The first test for Acheson will be to widen the sample size and look at the manuscripts of other naturalists--did they similarly treat images as icons, rather than indexes of observation. The second test will be to apply Acheson's notion of image to other print images--like the penitent man copied by Foxe and discussed by Aston et al.--to establish the extent to which image is detached from a textual episteme.