Parrot Culture

A Sulphur‐crested Cockatoo in fifteenth‐century Mantua: rethinking symbols of sanctity and patterns of trade

“…In 1551 Conrad Gesner wrote 'The parrot surpasses other birds in cleverness and understanding, because it has a large head and is brought into India from the true heaven, where it has learned not only how to speak but even how to think'. 51 However, by the seventeenth century the increasing availability of parrots in Europe meant that they ceased to be regarded as sacred. Although they initially retained their luxury status and were portrayed alongside their owners in portraits, as increasing numbers of parrots were brought into Europe, their price fell and their ability to speak became increasingly lampooned as mindless jabbering rather than miraculous gift.…”

The Taming of the Jew: Spit and the Civilizing Process in The Merchant of Venice

“…This strain of metaphor is brutally overdetermined; during Shylock's first appearance on stage, he is associated with the words dog and cur five times within seventeen lines of blank verse … Later, this same pattern of reference recurs in the intermittent insults of Solanio and others … Shylock himself adopts this vocabulary in his vengeful asseveration, 'Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.' 71 As Boehrer notes, the 'dog as social metaphor' performs three functions, namely, 'the notion of the dog as intimate friend or companion,' 'the identification of dogs with slaves and other abjected individuals,' and 'the association of dogs with predatory outsiders.' 72 Jews fell under both of the latter, negative social categories in the early modern English imagination: an abject and cursed nation that stubbornly refused to recognize Christian truth, andas attested to by accusations of host desecration, the kidnap and crucifixion of Christian children in mockery of the Passion, the ritual use of Christian blood, sorcery, cannibalism, male menstruation, the poisoning of wells and spreading of infectious disease, and financial exploitation through coin-clipping and usury -a socially, morally, and physiologically aberrant people who actively sought the destruction of that truth.…”

“…Thus as the relations between Jews and Christians are reversed, each term acquires the qualities and associations of its opposite. 74 Boehrer does not consider Shakespeare's use of spit and spitting in his otherwise careful analysis of The Merchant of Venice's canine imagery. As noted in the previous section, the reversal of the idiom of the Jew spitting at Christ offers an instance of 'the exchange of places between Antonio and Shylock' 75 that structures the play.…”