Animals, Animality, and Literature

Introduces the field of animal studies as a means of exploring human-animal relations in literature, philosophy, and culture.

Bruce Boehrer (Edited by), Molly Hand (Edited by), Brian Massumi (Edited by)

9781108429825, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 September 2018

398 pages, 14 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.7 cm, 0.69 kg

'This is a reference book indispensable to any self-respecting academic library, but it is also a publication that sits well in the personal collection of any student or lay person interested in the discipline.' Janette Leaf, The British Society for Literature and Science

Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.

Part I. Origins: 1. Aristotle's zoology in the medieval world Pieter Beullens
2. Howling wolves and other beasts: animals and monstrosity in the Middle Ages Luuk Houwen
3. Medieval bloodsport William Marvin
4. Animals in late-medieval hagiography and romance David Salter
5. Lions, mice, and learning from animals in Henryson's Fables Gillian Rudd
Part II. Development: 6. Animals, the devil, and the sacred in early modern English culture Molly Hand
7. Shakespeare's animal theater Bruce Boehrer
8. Classify and display: human and animal species, 1600–1815 Matthew Senior
9. Swift among the locusts: vermin, infestation, and natural philosophy in the eighteenth century Lucinda Cole
10. Animal subjectivities: gendered literary representation of animal minds in Anna Sewell's Black Beauty Deborah Denenholz Morse
11. Friedrich Nietzsche on human nature: between philosophical anthropology and animal studies Vanessa Lemm
Part III. Contemporary Perspectives: 12. Opening up a dossier: animals, animalities, and living together with Roland Barthes Michael Lundblad
13. Animal unfamiliars: a bestiary of time-travel cinema Alanna Thain
14. Theorizing animals: Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben Matthew Calarco
15. Becoming animal in the literary field Brian Massumi
16. Animation and animism Thomas Lamarre
17. Becoming mammoth: the domestic animal, its synthetic dreams and the pursuit of multispecies f(r)ictions David Jaclin
18. Bush/animals Peter Kulchyski.

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]