2020 Essays
La Maison Rustique: Cultivation and the Genre of the Household Manual
A significant proportion of the entries in Ms. Fr. 640 describe the cultivation of plants and animals. Might this indicate a conceptual link between the manuscript and the genre of the household manual? This essay investigates Charles Estienne’s La maison rustique (1564), a popular manual contemporary with the manuscript, to delineate divergences and convergences between Ms. Fr. 640 and the genre. While both works concern the human capacity to intervene in the natural world, Ms. Fr. 640 is more piecemeal in its approach to cultivation practices, concerned with the instrumental uses of plants and animals rather than the long-term management of the land, as La maison rustique is.
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More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Center for Science and Society
- The Making and Knowing Project
- Series
- Secrets of Craft and Nature
- Published Here
- July 23, 2026
