The accommodated animal
Subtitle: cosmopolity in Shakespearean locales
By: Laurie Shannon
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press; University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9780226924168; 9780226924175; 9780226924182
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; Human-animal relationships in literature; Animals in literature
Description: 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'.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: The law's first subjects: animal stakeholders, human tyranny, and the political life of early modern genesis; title: A cat may look upon a king: four-footed estate, locomotion, and the prerogative of free animals; title: Poor, bare, forked: animal happiness and the zoographic critique of humanity; title: Night-rule: the alternative politics of the dark; or, Empires of the nonhuman; title: Hang-dog looks: from subjects at law to objects of science in animal trials.