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The aim of this thesis is to offer an interpretative analysis of the epistemological role of animals in the early modern intellectual culture. I seek to investigate those ideals of knowledge-making that guided early modern people to write about animals in highly intertwined literary genres referred to here as the perspectives of the emblematic worldview, travel writing and anatomy. More specifically, I focus on the knowledge claims related to the elephant as a special, unfamiliar animal that intrigued the authors and readers alike. I regard the representations of this animal as tangible epitomes of the past epistemic practices which endeavoured to capture the visions of animals into the anthropocentric cognitive universe. My purpose is to make a critical reading of these practices by asking what the desired forms of making zoological knowledge were, and how the knowledge of this type was acquired and produced in practice during the early modern era. The timeframe of this study covers the period from 1620s to 1720s. My textual source material consists of natural historical treatises, religious sermons, fable books, geographical atlases, travel writings, advertising pamphlets, local newspapers, medical monographs and anatomical observational reports all of which have been published in England. In addition to these written sources, I also interpret several frontispieces and other images which are taken from these diverse literary products. I analyse this material by relying on the constructivist framework of the new intellectual history and its emphasis on language and textuality. In the previous research, this interdisciplinary mode of study has been referred to as “cultural studies of scientific knowledge”. More specifically, I seek to follow the perspective used by Katherine Acheson who has studied the connections between disparate fields of knowledge and their shared illustrative conventions during the early modern era by extending the field of literary criticism towards visual culture studies. In the course of my study, I address also other scholars who have paid attention to the literary culture of this era, applied rhetorical analysis to historical sources, and theorised about past epistemic practices. These scholars include James J. Bono and Peter Harrison, who have investigated the religious epistemology of the early modern intellectual culture, Jonathan P. A. Sell and David Spurr, who have explored the rhetorical universe of travel writing, and Ken Alder, Bruno Latour and Steven Shapin, who have contributed to the theoretical study of the past forms of knowledge-making. The results of this study imply that the perspectives of the emblematic worldview, travel writing and anatomy were characterised by distinct ideals of knowledge-making which guided the authors to give different interpretations of animals and their meaning in the world. For the theologians and other writers embracing the emblematic worldview, the created universe was a symbolic network of religious signs where idealised animal characters delivered heavenly wisdom to the sinned humans. Although some of the religiously oriented travel writers seem to have shared this view, the authors in this genre aimed, for the most part, to provide secular descriptions of the exotic beasts that both terrified and entertained the curious observers in the tropics. Their desire to map the fauna of such foreign locales by utilising the practices of scholarly observing reflects their adherence to the new sense-based epistemology and its emphasis on the first-hand witnessing of natural facts. This epistemology appears to have dominated particularly the worldview of the physicians and other practitioners of anatomy who examined myriads of animal bodies in order to comprehend and marvel the divine mechanics hidden beneath their skin. Nevertheless, this study suggests that there were also other, somewhat conflicting tendencies that affected the early modern knowledge-making practices. Firstly, the authors could employ knowledge claims simultaneously from different literary genres thus blurring the boundaries between the three perspectives of the emblematic worldview, travel writing and anatomy. With respect to the elephant, for example, the theologians could rely on the latest natural historical information when they elaborated the nature of the biblical Behemoth. Similarly, the anatomists did not hesitate to enhance their dissection reports of the deceased elephants with references to travellers’ tales and prevailing religious beliefs. Secondly, the tension between the old and the new epistemic practices was often complex and multifaceted. Although the authority of the emblematic worldview was declining in the face of the new sense-based epistemology, it seems that some remains of this traditional explicatory framework did survive in the margins of the knowledge-making practices. These remaining traces of the emblematic worldview derived from theology, and reflected the heavy influence of religion that appears to have permeated every aspect of the early modern intellectual culture. It was especially the old idea of nature as the second divine book that continued to inspire the authors across the different genres. The theologians and the anatomists, who were most prone to utilise this trope, did clearly modify the meaning of the metaphor according to the changing epistemic practices. Accordingly, the natural epistle that the anatomists read was an open and direct book which lacked the symbolic significations that could still be found from the interpretations of the theologians and other authors who read the divine word by esoteric means. Regardless of their differing backgrounds, however, all of these authors contributing to zoological study during this era seem to have regarded animals through the anthropocentric religious framework where brute beasts existed below human beings and outside the established norms of moral reference applied to men. In this context, it would seem that the common ideal for reading the book of nature was derived from the biblical myth told in the Genesis which eulogised Adam’s capability of naming and mastering the animals in Paradise. Apparently, this was one of the powerful ancient legends that could still stubbornly resist the prevalent trend of relinquishing all traces of the emblematic lore.