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Reading Cats and Dogs

Companion Animals in World Literature

Scott Slovic editor Zélia M Bora editor Marianne Marroum editor Françoise Besson editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Lexington Books

Published:15th Dec '20

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Reading Cats and Dogs cover

Throughout the world, people spend much of their time with animal companions of various kinds, frequently with cats and dogs. What meanings do we make of these relationships? In the ecocritical collection Reading cats and Dogs, a diverse array of scholars considers the philosophy, literature, and film devoted to human relationships with companion species. In addition to illuminating famous animal stories by Beatrix Potter, Jack London, Italo Svevo, and Michael Ondaatje, readers are introduced to the dog poems of Shuntarō Tanikawa, a Turkish documentary on stray cats as neighborhood companions, and the representation of diverse animal companions in Cameroonian novels. Focusing on “Stray and Feral Companions,” “The Usefulness of Companion Animals,” and “Problematizing Companion Animals,” Reading Cats and Dogs aims both to confirm and topple readers’ assumptions about the fellow travelers with whom we share our lives, our streets and fields, and our planet. Fifteen contributors from various countries reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and psychological complexities of our multispecies relationships, demonstrating the richness of ecocritical animal studies.

Within a mile of my home I encounter animals along a wide spectrum of constraint and freedom, ranging from pampered hyperdomestication to lethal neglect. This fascinating collection of essays extends that variety to the international, exploring animal-centred works of literature out of Beijing and Brussels, Soweto and Sri Lanka, Cameroon and Brazil. Spilling over into the philosophical and affectingly autobiographical, the contributions collectively challenge and valorise anew our views of animal companionship. Above all they emphasize that, enveloped by cross-cultural globalization, mass species extinction and slaughter, zoonotic pandemic and climate change, human and non-human animals’ fates are irrevocably entwined.

—Dan Wylie, author of Elephant

-- Dan W

ISBN: 9781793611062

Dimensions: 241mm x 160mm x 22mm

Weight: 553g

300 pages