Civilized creatures
Subtitle: urban animals, sentimental culture, and American literature, 1850-1900
By: Jennifer Mason.
Series: Animals, history, culture
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 229
Subjects: American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Animals in literature.; Animal welfare -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States.; Animal welfare -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Human-animal relationships in literature.; City and town life in literature.; Sentimentalism in literature.
Description: "In Civilized Creatures, Jennifer Mason challenges some of our most enduring ideas about how encounters with nonhuman nature shaped American literature and culture. Mason argues that in the second half of the nineteenth century the most powerful influence on Americans' understanding of their affinities with animals was not increasing separation from the pastoral and the wilderness; instead, it was the population's feelings about the ostensibly civilized animals they encountered in their daily lives." "Combining literary analysis with cultural histories of equestrianism, pet keeping, and the animal welfare movement, Civilized Creatures offers new readings of works by Susan Warner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles W. Chesnutt. In each case, Mason demonstrates that understanding contemporary relationships between humans and animals is essential for understanding the debates about gender, race, and cultural power enacted in these texts."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.