Introduction: Armored Beasts and the Elephant in the Room

Abstract

Animal spectacles are important for a holistic understanding of early modern Spanish culture. Influenced by Albrecht Dürer’s Rhinoceros, early modern Spain celebrated itself as a planetary world power through the spectacles of an exotic elephant, rhinoceros, armadillo, and lion. Also, partially due its role as a foil to the positing of animals as exotic, Spain created a spectacle of a homegrown bull. This chapter asserts the importance of deploying the methodology of a biogeography for one of each of these species, all of whom played a role as an animal protagonist in a spectacle. The writing of biogeographies takes the extinction of species in the Anthropocene into account and, in contrast to the negative impact of each animal’s role as an object in a spectacle, places an emphasis on an earth ethics that fosters healthy animal-human communities.