Title: The accommodated animal : cosmopolity in Shakespearean locales /
Authors: Shannon, Laurie.
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, Criticism and interpretation.; Animals in literature; Human-animal relationships in literature.
Abstract: Shakespeare wrote of lions, shrews, horned toads, curs, mastifss, and hell-hounds. But he used the word 'animal' only eight times in his work - which was typical for the 16th century, when the word was rarely used. As Laurie Shannon reveals in this book, the animal-human divide first came strongly into play in the 17th century, with Descartes's famous formulation that reason sets humans above other species: 'I think, therefore I am'.
Contents: Creatures and cosmopolitans: before "the animal" -- The law's first subjects: animal stakeholders, human tyranny, and the political life of early modern genesis -- A cat may look upon a king: four-footed estate, locomotion, and the prerogative of free animals -- Poor, bare, forked: animal happiness and the zoographic critique of humanity -- Night-rule: the alternative politics of the dark; or, Empires of the nonhuman -- Hang-dog looks: from subjects at law to objects of science in animal trials.