Abstract
The article deals with stories about camels in the zoological imaginary of the West. The focus lies in a quarrel that occurred between artists and scholars at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris in the 17th century about the absence of camels in a Poussin painting, at a time when rhetorical and poetic codes invaded painting. The problem addressed is about the significance of contiguity between animal and man in history painting, with its lofty themes and characters, and the question of the admission of the animal in the universe of man’s resemblance. There are two fundamental questions, one concerns the bothersome animal, in the mediation between cultures, the one that is the vehicle and symbol of the other and can cross the boundaries, creating discomfort in the universe of taxonomies and in the system of representations; the other concerns the symbolic constitution of the global East-West dualism, in which the camel will play a role.
Keywords:
camel; orientalism; physiognomy; zoological classifications; East/West