Ebook: Humanity in play: Man meets monkey in Ancien Régime France

In my dissertation, I show that the simian deconstructs notions of humanity and asks troubling questions about the true nature of the human being and the civilizing mission through which the black indigenous body becomes othered. Deviant, lustful, imitative and so very repellent but irresistible, the simian’s status as a borderline creature has a dark resonance during the French Ancien Régime, as explored here through three case studies of visual and textual representations. In chapter one, I examine the animal fountains in the Labyrinth of Versailles; my close analysis shows that the six simian fountains in this hedged maze and their accompanying Aesopic fables replay expropriation and the dangers of imitation for courtiers of the era. However, these simian fountains bear particular witness to the imitative feedback loop between Fouquet’s Vaux and Louis XIV’s Versailles and suggest that Versailles is based on imitation, the very misdeed against which the Labyrinth warns. In chapter two, I analyze Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tale of the human-born princess-turned-monkey “Babiole” which reveals the inherent tension between ugliness, refinement and beauty, and moreover unpacks a tale of the dehumanized colonial black body. My third case study furthers this connection between the simian and black body by conducting a parallel reading of the simian text and engravings of the Histoire naturelle Tome XIV, pitting Buffon’s literary text, which seeks divergence with and superiority over the simian and the non-white body, against the ultimate and uncanny proximity displayed by Jacques de Sève’s engravings. Through the exploration of this simian corpus, my work asks not only essential and underexplored questions on the nature of imitation for humankind, but also shows the intrinsic violence of the civilizing mission and the white European’s posturing and positioning over others, whether they be categorized as borderline creatures, beasts, or black, non-white bodies.