Peacock (Reaktion Books - Animal) | Date: 28 April 2011, 05:00
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Peacock (Reaktion Books - Animal)
By
* Publisher: Reaktion Books
* Number Of Pages: 224
* Publication Date: 2006-11-30
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1861892934
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781861892935
Product Description:
Breathtakingly beautiful and exotic, the peacock inspires devotion among both artists and bird lovers. Its iridescent plumage, when fully displayed, is a delight to behold.
The bird itself, as Christine E. Jackson notes in Peacock, appears to enjoy its audience, preening and strutting about within a few feet of humans. It is not surprising, then, that these vain birds and their distinctive feathers have been the prized possessions of kings for nearly three thousand years. Jackson here explores the peacock’s beauty—and its apparent attitude—through fairy tales, fables, and superstitions in both Eastern and Western cultures. Peacock takes stock of the bird as it appears within art, from the earliest mosaics to medieval illuminated manuscripts to modern graphics, with a special emphasis on the peacock’s symbolic value in the nineteenth-century arts and crafts and art nouveau movements. Jackson further details the peacock’s colorful presence in hats, clothing, and even sports equipment.
A sweeping combination of social and natural history, Peacock is the first book to bring together all the shimmering, colorful facets of these magnificent birds.
(20070126)
Summary: A Colorful History
Rating: 5
We consistently apply human traits to animals as a way of trying to understand them, when often such attempts only mislead. For instance, there is a long history, dating at least back to Aesop, of imagining that the peacock is over-proud of its fine plumage. However appropriate it is to attribute emotions to birds, there is no way that a peacock could have pride, but "as proud as a peacock" is proverbial, and everyone knows exactly what it means because everyone knows just how gorgeous a bird the peacock is. The history of our attribution of pride to the peacock, as well as just about everything else in peacock lore, is related in _Peacock_ (Reaktion Books) by Christine E. Jackson. It is a small book, 190 pages, within the Reaktion "Animal" series, but it has plenty of illustrations (most, quite suitably for the subject, in color) and is one of the surprisingly few books devoted entirely to the peacock. There is plenty more to learn about the peacock than the emotions we wrongly attribute to it.
One of the great problems of such attributions is that not only are they wrong, they may color our observations and make those wrong, too. The elaborate feathers were supposed to be a hindrance to easy flight, and the bird has a reputation for clumsy flight, if not flightlessness itself. It's not so. The male's train does not seem to bother the peacock as it runs through the bush, nor does it prevent secure flight. The flight may be a short, rapid rise to a high perch, but it is well controlled and efficient. The peacock's supposedly inefficient flight bothered even Darwin, who went on to an understanding of sexual selection. Part of the reason that the bird is so universally recognized, beyond the dramatic appearance of the male, is that it has been distributed for centuries all around the world from its home around India and Sri Lanka. Aesop knew of peacocks, as did Aristotle. Peacocks show up in unusual places. They made a dance craze in Spain in the sixteenth century, a stately slow dance imitating a male's strut, the "pavane", from the Spanish for peacock, "pavo". Live peacocks are familiar garden decorations, and if the live ones are too noisy, topiary versions are common in formal gardens. The peacock feather especially lent its color and shape to Art Nouveau in the late nineteenth century.
We are used to the familiar blue peacock, but there is an African version of the peacock that is smaller, dumpier, and less brightly colored, without the train. It is surprising that the splendid blue peacock is surpassed in beauty by the green peacock which comes in different varieties from areas around the Malay peninsula. They are more brightly colored, but less often seen. Unlike their blue cousins, they are shy and stay away from people and villages. They are aggressive, and have trouble getting along with each other, let alone with other species in aviaries. They are thus harder to keep in captivity, and so most people do not know they exist. Most of the lovely illustrations in this accessible and entertaining book are necessarily of the blue version, which has made the impression on the world. It is hard to think of an aspect of the peacock that Jackson has failed to cover. There is even a considerable section on the importance of peacocks in religion, in which she points out that in eastern religions the bird is revered for its beauty and is associated with deities; Kama, the Hindu god of love, for instance, rides a peacock, and peacock feathers are attributes of several minor deities in Tibetan Buddhism. In Christianity, however, the peacock came to symbolize Christ's incorruptibility and resurrection, because somehow its flesh, which can be dried easily, was thought not to putrefy. The Pope might sport a fan of ostrich feathers to represent all those eyes as the vigilance of the church. It is a secular west which has seen the peacock as proud, and has compared it with a devil due to its piercing voice or a thief due to its "stealthy" walk. Jackson's book is a wonderful introduction to the historical and social aspects of a remarkable fowl; the peacock is much more than just a pretty bird.
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