Animals, Animality, and Literature

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

This collection provides a wide-ranging survey of where the field of literary animal studies currently stands. It will be a key resource for specialists who wish to keep current on developments in the field, and non-specialists who seek to understand how these fields have shaped the relationship between human and non-human animal life.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.