Notes on originality

As mentioned in the previous page "The History of Four-footed Beasts," it is hard to see Topsell's version with originality, but rather as an English translated, shortened version of Conrad Gesner's Historiae Animalium. Therefore, in the rest of the exhibition, the illustrations and Texts will be credited to Gesner, instead of Topsell, even though I would put Topsell as a source of images (since they were excerpted from Topsell's version, not from Gesner's.) 

The exhibition will be focused on the relatinoship between texts and juxtaposing images -- how well those images convey knowledge and information the texts describe. The images that are used for the exhibition are chosen for they are cultural images, rather than scientific images, not only because the purpose of the exhibition is to explore the cultural context of animals but also because those images best matches the study of nature and its history of the period -- as a cultural products. 

Five images chosen for this exhibition can be divided into three different categories -- animals in the first group are illustrated along with their human companion, animals from the second group are illustrated with other animals to show their place in nature, and an animal from the last group is illustrated in its environmental context such as its habitat.