Thomas Hardy and Animals

Thomas Hardy and Animals looks at creatures in Hardy's novels, examining human-animal boundaries debated by the Victorian scientific and philosophical communities.

Anna West (Author)

9781107179172, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 April 2017

218 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

'… West's excellent study provides a very welcome introduction to the 'creatures' that play so notable a part in Hardy's oeuvre.' Adrian Tait, The British Society for Literature and Science

Thomas Hardy and Animals examines the human and nonhuman animals who walk and crawl and fly across and around the pages of Hardy's novels. Animals abound in his writings, yet little scholarly attention has been paid to them so far. This book fills this gap in Hardy studies, bringing an important author within range of a new and developing area of critical inquiry. It considers the way Hardy's representations of animals challenged ideas of human-animal boundaries debated by the Victorian scientific and philosophical communities. In moments of encounter between humans and animals, Hardy questions boundaries based on ideas of moral sense or moral agency, language and reason, the possession of a face, and the capacity to suffer and perceive pain. Through an emphasis on embodied encounters, his writings call for an extension of empathy to others, human or nonhuman. In this accessible book Anna West offers a new approach to Hardy criticism.

Introduction: Hardy's 'shifted [...] centre of altruism': an ethics of encounter and empathy
1. What does it mean to be a creature?
2. 'The only things we believe in are the sheep and the dogs'
3. 'Artful' creatures, part one: animal language
4. 'Artful' creatures, part two: can a snake have a face?
5. 'Artful' creatures, part three: 'pre-posthumanist' Hardy
6. Useful creatures: rethinking Hardy's humanitarianism.

Subject Areas: Animals & society [JFFZ], Classic fiction [pre c 1945 FC], Literature & literary studies [D]