Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern

303 Pages·2019·2.16 MB·English

by  Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan, Jane Spencer

Reading Literary Animals
ReadingLiteraryAnimalsexploresthestatusandrepresentationofanimals
in literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. Essays by leading
scholars in the field examine various figurative, agential, imaginative,
ethical, and affective aspects of literary encounters with animality, showing
howpracticesofclosereadingprovokenewwaysofthinkingaboutanimals
and the texts in which they appear. Through investigations of works by
Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Virginia
Woolf, and Ted Hughes, among many others, Reading Literary Animals
demonstrates the value of distinctively literary animal studies.
Karen L. Edwards is Professor of English at the University of
Exeter, UK.
Derek Ryan is Senior Lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University
of Kent, UK.
Jane Spencer is Professor of English at the University of Exeter, UK.
Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture
Series Editor: Karen Raber, University of Mississippi, USA
Literaryandculturalcriticismhasventuredintoabravenewworldinrecent
decades:posthumanism,ecocriticism,criticalanimalstudies,thenewmate-
rialisms, the new vitalism, and other related approaches have transformed
the critical environment, reinvigorating our encounters with familiar texts,
andinvitingustotakenoteofneworneglectedones.Avastarrayofnon-
humancreatures,things,andforcesarenowemergingasimportantagentsin
theirownright.Inspiredbyhumanconcernforanailingplanet,ecocriticism
hasgrappledwiththequestionofhowimportantworksofartcanbetothe
preservationofsomethingwehavetraditionallycalled“nature.”Yetlitera-
ture’scapacitytotakeusonunexpectedjourneysthroughthenetworksof
affiliation and affinity we share with the earth on which we dwell—and
withoutwhichwedie—andtoconfrontuswiththedramaofourcommon
struggle to survive and thrive has not diminished in the face of what Lyn
White Jr. called “our ecological crisis.” From animals to androids, non-
humancreaturesandobjectspopulatecriticalanalysesinincreasinglycom-
plex ways, complicating our conception of the cosmos by dethroning the
individualsubjectanddismantlingthecomfortablecategoriesthroughwhich
we have interpreted our existence. Until now, however, the elements that
compose this wave of scholarship on non-human entities have had limited
placestogathertobenurturedasacollectiveproject.“Perspectivesonthe
Non-Human in Literature and Culture” provides that local habitation. In
thisseries,readerswillfindcreaturesofalldescriptions,aswellaseveryother
form of biological life; they will also meet the non-biological, the micro-
scopic,theethereal,theintangible.Itisourgoalfortheseriestoprovidean
encounterzonewhereallformsofhumanengagementwiththenon-human
in all periods and national literatures can be explored, and where the
discoveriesthatresultcanspeaktooneanother,aswellastoscholarsand
students.
Animals, Plants, and Landscapes
An Ecology of Turkish Literature and Film
Hande Gurses, Irmak Ertuna-Howison
ReconfiguringHuman,NonhumanandPosthumaninLiterature
andCulture
Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Essi Varis
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Perspectives-on-the-Non-Human-in-Literature-and-Culture/book-series/
PNHLC
Reading Literary Animals
Medieval to Modern
Karen L. Edwards, Derek Ryan and
Jane Spencer
Firstpublished2020
byRoutledge
52VanderbiltAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
andbyRoutledge
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RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninforma
business
©2020Taylor&Francis
TherightofKarenL.Edwards,DerekRyanandJaneSpencer
tobeidentifiedastheauthorsoftheeditorialmaterial,andof
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Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedor
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybe
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identificationandexplanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Spencer,Jane,editorofcompilation.|Ryan,Derek,
editorofcompilation.|Edwards,KarenL.,editorof
compilation.
Title:Readingliteraryanimals:Medievaltomodern/editedby
JaneSpencer,DerekRyanandKarenEdwards.
Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2019.|
Series:Perspectivesonthenon-humaninliteratureandculture
Identifiers:LCCN2018048130|ISBN9781138093782
(hardback)|ISBN9781138093850(pbk.)|
ISBN9781315106366(ebk)
Subjects:LCSH:Literature–Historyandcriticism.|Animalsin
literature.
Classification:LCCPN56.A64R432019|DDC
809/.93362–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2018048130
ISBN:978-1-138-09378-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-09385-0(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-10636-6(ebk)
TypesetinSabon
bySwales&Willis,Exeter,Devon,UK
Contents
ListofContributors viii
Introduction 1
KARENL.EDWARDS,DEREKRYANANDJANESPENCER
PartI:TestingMetaphor 11
1 EntitiesintheWorld:IntertextualityinMedieval
BestiariesandFables 13
CAROLYNNVANDYKE
2 Una’s“MilkewhiteLambe” 29
KARENL.EDWARDS
3 Behn’sBeasts:Aesop’sFablesandSurinam’s
WildlifeinOroonoko 46
JANESPENCER
PartII:PlottingAgency 67
4 Shakespeare’sAnimalParts 69
PHILIPARMSTRONG
5 ExitPursuingaHuman:PerformingAnimals
ontheEarlyModernStage 88
ANDYKESSON
vi Contents
6 CollaborativeAgency:AnimalsinHardy’s
RuralNovels 104
VIRGINIARICHTER
PartIII:InscribingVoice 121
7 CountingAnimals:NonhumanVoicesinLearand
Carroll 123
KAORINAGAI
8 “WhatAmI?”:LocatingtheIndeterminate
VoicesofTedHughes’sAnimalPoems 140
CARRIESMITH
9 “Thou,SpottedEros”:LovePoetry,Taxonomy,andthe
EroticsofAdamicNaming 157
MATTHEWMARGINI
PartIV:ExploitingBodies 177
10 TheHuntingoftheHare:FemaleVirtueand
CompanionateMarriageinHenryFielding’s
JosephAndrewsandTomJones 179
ADELARAMOS
11 “FilthandFatandBloodandFoam”:AnimalCapital,
CommodifiedMeat,andthe“Human”inGreat
Expectations 194
JENNIFERMCDONELL
12 Fiction,Fashion,andtheVictorianFurSealHunt 212
JOHNMILLER
PartV:LovingDogs 227
13 AnimalIntimacies:Cross-SpeciesAffectand
theLapdogLyric 229
LAURABROWN
Contents vii
14 Anthropomorphism,Personification,and
HumanizationinWilliamWordsworth’sDogPoems 245
JAMESP.CARSON
15 “WasitFlush,orwasitPan?”:VirginiaWoolf,
EthelSmyth,andCanineBiography 264
DEREKRYAN
Index 282
Contributors
Philip Armstrong is Associate Professor at the New Zealand Centre
for Human–Animal Studies, University of Canterbury. He is Co-
Principal Investigator of the Marsden project “Kararehe: Animals
in Art, Literature and Everyday Culture in Aotearoa New Zeal-
and,” which involves researching representations of farm animals
and of cetacean species in past and present New Zealand literature
and popular culture. His most recent book is What Animals Mean
in the Fiction of Modernity (Routledge, 2008) which surveys
representations of animals and human animal relations in well-
known fictional texts from the eighteenth century onwards. In
addition, Philip is the editor (with Laurence Simmons of Auckland
University) of Knowing Animals (Brill, 2007), a collection of
essays in the Human–Animal Studies series.
Laura Brown isJohn Wendell Anderson ProfessorofEnglish and Senior
ViceProvostforUndergraduateEducationatCornellUniversity,USA.
She has published widely on the English eighteenth century, and she
has written on such writers as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John
Dryden,HenryFielding,SamuelRichardson,andDanielDefoe.Laura
has written several books, including Ends of Empire: Women and
Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Cornell
University Press, 1993), Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture
in the English Eighteenth Century (Cornell University Press, 2001),
and, most recently, Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans
and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination (Cornell
University Press, 2010).
James P. Carson is Professor of English at Kenyon College in Ohio. He
is the author of Populism, Gender and Sympathy in the Romantic
Novel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). His articles have appeared in
such periodicals as Criticism, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Eight-
eenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Philological Quar-
terly. Recent work on animals in Walter Scott and Jane Austen has
ListofContributors ix
appeared in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies and in
Global Jane Austen (edited by Laurence Raw and Robert Dryden).
Karen L. Edwards is Professor of English at the University of Exeter.
Her research primarily concerns early modern literature, especially
the poetry and prose of John Milton, and its relationship to politics,
religion, and the history of natural history. Her book-length projects
include Milton and the Natural World: Science and Poetry in ‘Para-
dise Lost’ (CUP, 1999) and Milton's Reformed Animals: An Early
Modern Bestiary (published between 2005 and 2009 in nine fascicles
of Milton Quarterly). Karen is currently working on a monograph
entitled Political Animals in Early Modern England.
Andy Kesson is Reader in English Literature at Roehampton University
in the UK and a guest lecturer at Shakespeare’s Globe, where he
regularly speaks to and works with actors, audiences, and students.
HeisauthorofJohn Lyly and EarlyModern Authorship (Manchester
UP, 2014), an examination of the period’s best-selling writer and his
relationship with his contemporary and subsequent literary culture.
He is also co-editor, with Emma Smith, of The Elizabethan Top 10:
Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2013).
Matthew Margini completed a PhD in English and Comparative Litera-
ture at Columbia University, USA, in 2018, specializing in Victorian
literature and its animal representations. His research interests include
taxonomy,petpoetry,prehistoricbeasts,Victorianposthumanism,and
representations of nonhuman creatures in contemporary videogames.
HisessayshaveappearedinTheNewYorker,TheLosAngelesReview
of Books, and The Atlantic, and he is working on two book manu-
scripts: an updated version of his dissertation, “Incoherent Beasts:
Victorian Literature and the Problem of Species,” which investigates
how Victorian literature responded to the destabilization of species
categories, and a book-length critical study of the game “Red Dead
Redemption”forBossFightBooks.HecurrentlyteachesEnglishatthe
RansomEvergladesSchoolinMiami,FL.
Jennifer McDonell is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the
University of New England, Australia, and has research interests in
animal studies and in the life and work of Robert Browning and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She has published articles and book
chaptersonanimalsintheworksofCharlesDickens,ElizabethBarrett
Browningand inVictorian literature morebroadly.She isco-editorof
several collections of essays, including special journal issues on ani-
mals and literature (Australian Literary Studies, 2010) and on the
Victorian beginningsofEnglish Studies (Modern Language Quarterly,
2014). Her article, “The Animal Turn, Literary Studies, and the
Academy” is reprinted in Blackwell’s Literary Theory: An Anthology,