La fauconnerie à la Renaissance

"La Fauconnerie à la Renaissance presents a critical edition of Jacques Auguste de Thou's celebrated neo-Latin didactic poem on falconry, together with its first modern translation (into French) and a detailed commentary. A substantive preliminary study of falconry in France, from the time of Francis I to the regency of Marie de Medicis, places de Thou's Hieracosophion firmly within its historical and cultural context. Ingrid A. R. De Smet draws on a broad range of manuscripts and printed texts, as well as on archival and figurative sources to reassess the court's obsession with hunting and hawking. Her study also probes the broader demographics of the sport, considers the diplomatic, economic and ecological extent of the trade in birds of prey, and surveys the period's arguments for and against hunting. An analysis of the literary theme of hunting and hawking bears out the uneasy position of didactic poetry between instruction and aesthetic pleasure. Varied in contents, the book offers new insights for our understanding of Medieval and foreign influences on hawking in Renaissance France. It will appeal to those interested in the history of hunting, to historians of science (ornithology and veterinary medicine), as well as to students of Neo-Latin Studies and sixteenth-century French history and literature." --