Punch and Judy

"In my opinion the street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive.

I regard it as quite harmless in its influence, and as an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct.

It is possible, I think, that one secret source of pleasure very generally derived from this performance… is the satisfaction the spectator feels in the circumstances that likenesses of men and women can be so knocked about without any pain or suffering.."

[Charles Dickens (in a letter) 1848]

[All images below were spliced together from screen shots]

"Who'd be plagued with a wife
That could set himself free
With a rope or a knife,
Or a good stick, like me"

"The Character of Mr Punch is descended from the Italian clown Pulcinella who featured in the Commedia Dell' Arte [previously] medieval tradition of the 15th Century.

Players toured Europe and Samuel Pepys recalls seeing such a troupe in Covent Garden in 1662 during the festivities surrounding the wedding of Charles II. This date is considered 'Punch's Birthday' and Mr Punch first become popular in London under the name Punchinello before it was shortened to the Mr Punch we know today.

This new irreverent wooden star was taken up by British puppeteers for his moral story could be used to comment on the politics of the day and so he traveled around the country for the next century. By 1800, he had become a hand puppet in the little street corner stages used by travelling puppeteers and known as Puppet Booths, new characters were added, he gained a wife, called Judy and began taking on British theatrical traditions.

This transformation from an adult morality play with plenty of contemporary social comment and satire to the colourful knockabout 'Punch and Judy Show' we know today performed using Glove Puppets was brought about as Punch absorbed the comedy of the Slapstick theatrical tradition." [source]

• Etchings by George Cruikshank (pub. by S Prowett in London in 1828) accompanied the first written Punch & Judy script. The images are available via the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University (search on 'Punch').
• Punch & Judy at Wikipedia.
• 'Punch and Judy: A Short History with the Original Dialogue' (J Collier & G Cruikshank)
• BBC: Puppet Show Faces Knockout Punch?
• Previously: George Cruikshank.
  

The Vallard Atlas

Particular points of interest about this rather extraordinary manuscript :::::

• It was (anonymously) produced by the Dieppe school (France) in 1547 and was either copied from Portuguese maps or was completed with the input of (a) Portuguese cartographer(s)
• The maps are known as portolan (navigational) charts [previously]
• Unusually, north is shown at the bottom of the maps in the style of Muslim cartographers (very rare in European Christian mapping)
• Allegedly, this atlas shows the first ever European record of Australian coastline -- some 250 years ahead of Capt. Cook and 60-odd years before the earliest official European discovery/sighting/mapping of any Australian coastline by William Janszoon in 1606 [see: Landing List].
• The miniatures and marginalia depict 16th century native and colonisation scenes
• The first[?] use of the name "Canada" in a map [also]
  

[Click through to large and VERY large versions of these images]

'Terra Java' (east coast of Australia?)

'La Java' (north coast of Australia?) East Indies, part of Asia

North America, East Coast

South-Eastern South America, Straits of Magellan

North-Eastern South America

Aegean Sea

Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf

Western Europe and North-Western Africa

Europe and Northern Africa
West Indies, Mexico, Central America, northern South America
(correct identification - which is in the guide - was pointed out by a commenter)

To be honest, the attraction of this atlas, for me, rests with its unique aesthetic properties rather than in the folkloric dimension it *may* play in the mapping history of the Australian coastline (I don't think the evidence is conclusively persuasive) . If anything, I'm a bit miffed that I didn't grow up speaking Portuguese, which seems far beyond my meagre linguistic talents these days.

VIA "The Vallard Atlas is a magnificent portolan atlas, one of the bibliographic treasures of sixteenth century Europe. One of its most noteworthy characteristics is the miniatures depicting countless illustrations of the daily life of the native population in every territory. The Vallard Atlas, whilst ascribed to the Dieppe cartography school, has a clearly Portuguese flavour due to either its anonymous creator or the model that inspired it."

• HM 29 Vallard Atlas is owned by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California and is hosted online by the Digital Scriptorium Database.
• The HM 29 manuscript guide.
• Theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia - a fairly comprehensive article on Wikipedia.
• 'Beyond Capricorn: How Portugese Adventurers Secretly Discovered and Mapped Australia 250 Years Before Captain Cook' 2007 by Peter Trickett.
• 'Java la grande: The Portuguese discovery of Australia' 1984 by Lawrence Fitzgerald.
• 'Was Australia Charted Before 1606?: The Java La Grande Inscriptions' 2006 by WAR Richardson. [more]
• 'The Secret Discovery of Australia: Portuguese Ventures 200 Years before Captain Cook' 1977 by KG McIntyre.
• "Rotated map puts a twist in the foundation tale" (SMH 2007)
• M Moleiro in Spain produce a very high class facsimile edition of the Vallard Atlas.
• Forum discussions: Ship nostalia & Hispanismo. (these include more quoted media articles)

De Aquatilibus

'Petri Bellonii Cenomani De aquatilibus, libri duo cum [epsilon, iota] conibus ad viuam ipsorum effigiem, quoad eius fieri potuit, expressis ...'; 1553 {Pierre Belon}

































































Physician, polymath, traveller, artist and naturalist, Pierre Belon (1517- 1564), was most famously a founding protagonist for the phenomenon of homology in comparative anatomy. He obtained his medical degree at the University of Paris and, under the patronage of King Francis I, Belon was sent on diplomatic missions abroad which allowed him to study the wildlife of the eastern Mediterranean.

Belon was regarded as a great savant of the 16th century and he is one of the initiators of modern natural history. The appearance in 1553 of Belon's work on fish, molluscs and aquatic mammals - 'De Aquatilibus' - constituted the greatest single advance in the scientific study and classification of fish since Aristotle. It was a standard ichthyology text well into the 17th century, before it was superseded.

"In the 'Aquatilibus' are described a hundred and ten fishes, of which twenty-two are cartilaginous, seventeen fresh-water, and the rest sea fishes. . . . The figures representing them are easily recognizable, not-withstanding the simplicity of the style of the wood-engravings.

'His philosophical mind had a very correct appreciation of the genera. His groupings were made with a surprisingly just instinct. To an indefatigable activity he joined vast erudition. He brought to the front the study of nature and of the books that treat of it. . . . The feature that especially prepared new bases for the science of fishes was his observations on the thoracic and abdominal splanchnology of those animals.'" [source]

In 1564, Belon was on his way to visit a friend and stopped to pick herbs in the Bois de Boulogne (a Parisian forest) when he was attacked and killed by robber bandits. He was 47 years old.

• The images in this post were sourced from Harvard University Library's copy of 'De Aquatilibus' by Pierre Belon.
• Much larger page images from 'De Aquitilibus' can, however, be obtained from the Strasbourg University Digital Library's edition.
• Popular Science Monthly/Volume 34/March 1889/Sketch of Pierre Belon (online via Wikisource).
• Pierre Belon's Marvelous Nature.
• Via Houghton Library Blog and @john_overholt.
• Pierre Belon's Early Natural History of Birds (the image below is Belon's most famous and comes from Wikimedia)
• [W]; NNDB; ZSL; Christie's; Amazon.

Journey Underground

"In accordance with your royal order, we hereby send the animal, which sometime since came down to us from the firmament; which animal calls itself man.

We have, with sedulous care and patient industry, taught this singular creature in our school, and after a very severe examination, pronounce it to be very quick in its perceptions and very docile in its manners.

Nevertheless, from its obtuse and miserable judgement — which we believe arises from its too hasty inferences — its ridiculous scepticism on unquestionable points, and its no less ridiculous credulity on doubtful ones, we may scarcely number it among sensible beings."

'Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum' (original 1741 title)
or 'Niels Klims Forundelige Reise'
or 'Niels Klim's journey under the ground being a narrative of his wonderful descent to the subterranean lands; together with an account of the sensible animals and trees inhabiting the planet Nazar and the Firmament'.
[by Norwegian-Danish author, Ludvig Holberg]

Niels Klim's descent to the planet Nazar [1845 edition]

[alternative version 1789]

[1834 edition]

A new fashion introduced into Martinia [1834 edition]
[alternative version 1845]

[1834 edition]
[alternative version 1789]

[1834 edition]
[alternative version 1789]

Presentation of Niels Klim at the Court of Potu [1834 edition]
[alternative version 1845]

A citizen of Potu led in triumph [1834]
[alternative version 1845]

A criminal led by three watchmen [1845]
[alternative version 1789]

[1834 edition]

En Inbyggare i Potu [1767 edition]

En inbyggare i Musikanterland [1767 edition]

Et måltid i Mezendora [1767 edition]

Louis Holberg's 1741 science fiction / fantasy / utopian / satirical novel derides his contemporary 18th century society while drawing inspiration from Thomas More's Utopia and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

"His only novel, it describes a utopian society from an outsider's point of view, and often pokes fun at diverse cultural and social topics such as morality, science, sexual equality, religion, governments, and philosophy."

It was considered too radical for Nordic culture, so the first edition was published in Latin in Germany where it circulated to a much wider audience and its popularity ensured it was quickly translated into a number of languages.

"One of the most influential 18th century works of proto-SF satire, it describes the fantastic voyage of Niels Klim through a hole in a mountain (the name Holberg can be translated as "hollow mountain") into a hollow earth on the model suggested by Edmond Halley, in which a minute internal sun is circled by the planet Nazar.

Here Klim finds himself in the land of Potu [ie 'Utop'], whose inhabitants show a societal pattern diametrically opposed to that of the contemporary stereotype: women are the dominant sex and males perform only menial tasks."

From the 1845 introduction (in English):

"There are many persons of both sexes in my country, who believe in fairies and supernatural beings, and who are ready to swear, that they have been conveyed by spirits to hills and mountain caves.

This superstition is ridiculed in Klim, the hero of the tale. He is supposed to be transported to the world under ground, where he meets with some surprising adventures. Many strange creatures inhabit this new world; trees, for instance, are introduced, endowed with speech, and musical instruments discuss questions of philosophy and finance.

Amongst the characters, those geniuses, who perceive everything at a glance, but penetrate nothing, are conspicuous. People of quick perception, whom we use to admire, are despised by the Potuans, who look upon them as idle loungers, that, though always moving, make no progress. Prudent men, on the contrary, who measure their own strength, and advance cautiously, are greatly esteemed by that nation, though with us they pass for fools or cowards.

The Potuans and Martinians are examples of both these extremes. By the former Klim was considered a blockhead, on account of the quickness of his perceptions; by the latter he was equally despised for the slowness of his apprehension. To Klim, who measures virtues and vices by the ordinary standard, everything is a paradox; but what he at first condemns, he admires and extols after deliberation; so that the object of the whole work is to correct popular errors, and to distinguish the semblance of virtue and vice from the reality. Its subordinate design is to expose the monstrous fictions, which some authors obtrude upon us in their descriptions of remote countries."

• The majority of images above are kindly made available through Norway's Bergen Public Library Flickr set {thanks Håvard!} [Homepage of Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek].
• 'Niels Klim's journey under the ground by baron Ludvig Holberg' [1845 edition] is available in full in English at Project Gutenberg.
• HOLBERG, LUDVIG from the (new) beta version of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction [via Metafilter]
• Wikipedia: Niels Klim's Underground Travels and Ludvig Holberg (bio).
• The (contentious) History of Science Fiction / Early History of Science Fiction.
• Via the always excellent Princeton Graphic Arts blog.
• Previously (highly recommended): Flight to Antipodes, featuring the marvellously eccentric proto-SF work by Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne (1781).
• 'The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground' by Ludvig Holberg on Amazon.
• UPDATE: Go see: Stories of a Hollow Earth at the Public Domain Review : "Peter Fitting, author of Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology, explores Holberg’s book in the wider context of the hollow earth theory."