The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas: The Natural History of the New World / Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales

Nicolas, Louis/ Gagnon, Francois-marc

ISBN 10: 0773538763 / ISBN 13: 9780773538764

Published by McGill Queens Univ Pr, 2011

About this Item

bilingual edition. 555 pages. 12.50x9.00x2.25 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # 0773538763

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas: The Natural History of the New World / Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ Pr
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773538763
• ISBN 13: 9780773538764
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.67 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Part art, part science, part anthropology, this ambitious project presents an early Canadian perspective on natural history that is as much artistic and fantastical as it is encyclopedic. Edited and introduced by François-Marc Gagnon, The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas showcases an intriguing attempt to document the life of the new world - flora, fauna, and aboriginal. The book brings together for the first time the illustrated Codex Canadensis and The Natural History of the New World, following Gagnon's argument that both can be attributed to Louis Nicolas, a French Jesuit priest who travelled throughout Canada between 1664 and 1675. Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales, originally written in classical French, has been put in modern French by Réal Ouellet and translated into English by Nancy Senior. The Natural History presents a pre-Linnaean botany and pre-Darwinian account of living things, including hundreds of species of plants and vivid descriptions of wildlife. It is thoroughly annotated, focusing on the contemporary identification of species, as the result of a pan-Canadian collaboration of experts in fields from linguistics to biology and botany. The Codex Canadensis, currently in the collection of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is reproduced in full and provides both a fascinating visual account of wildlife as Nicolas saw it and a rare example of early Canadian art. Gagnon's introduction profiles Louis Nicolas and analyses connections between his work and European examples of natural illustration from the period. The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas shows how the wildlife and native inhabitants of the new world were understood and documented by a seventeenth-century European and makes available fundamental documents in the history and visual culture of early North America.

About the Author

François-Marc Gagnon (1935-2019) was founding director and distinguished research fellow of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a member of the Order of Canada. Nancy Senior is professor emerita in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Saskatchewan. Réal Ouellet is associate professor in the Département des littératures at the Université Laval.