Title: Civilized creatures
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.
Subjects: American fiction, Animal welfare, Animals in literature, City and town life in literature, History, History and criticism, Human-animal relationships in literature, Moral and ethical aspects of Animal welfare, Sentimentalism in literature, American fiction, history and criticism, 19th century, Human-animal relationships, Moral and ethical aspects
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century