The rise of animals and descent of man, 1660-1800 : toward posthumanism in British literature between Descartes and Darwin / John Morillo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morillo, John D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanism.

Humanism in literature.

Animals in literature.

Human-animal relationships--Philosophy.

Human-animal relationships.

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval.

Animals (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

xliii, 219 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Newark : University of Delaware Press, [2018].

Summary:

The Rise of Animals and Descent of Man, 1660-1800 illuminates compelling historical connections between a current fascination with animal life and the promotion of the moral status of non-human animals as ethical subjects deserving our attention and respect, and a deep interest in the animal as agent in eighteenth-century literary culture. It explores how writers, including well-known poets, important authors who mixed art and science, and largely forgotten writers of sermons and children's stories, all offered innovative alternatives to conventional narratives about the meaning of animals in early modern Europe. They question Descartes's claim that animals are essentially soulless machines incapable of thought or feelings. British writers from 1660 to 1800 remain informed by Cartesianism, but often counter it by recognizing that feelings are as important as reason when it comes to defining animal life and its relation to human life. This British line of thought deviates from Descartes by focusing on fine feeling as a register of moral life empowered by sensibility and sympathy, but this very stance is complicated by cultural fears that too much kindness to animals can entail too much kinship with them-fears made famous in the later reaction to Darwinian evolution. This book uncovers ideological tensions between sympathy for animals and a need to defend the special status of humans from the rapidly developing Darwinian perspective. The writers it examines engage in complex negotiations with sensibility and a wide range of philosophical and theological traditions. Their work anticipates posthumanist thought and the challenges it poses to traditional humanist values within the humanities and beyond. The Rise of Animals and Descent of Man, 1660-1800 is a sophisticated intellectual history of the origins of our changing attitudes about animals that at the same time illuminates major currents of eighteenth-century British literary culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 On the Posthuman Character of Cavendish's Fantastic Hyphenated Creatures 1

2 Cultured Children and the Natural World: Problems with Animal Sympathy in Lessons for the Rising Generation of Readers, 1730-1800 23

3 Anglican Clerics and Animal Clemency, 1675-1792 69

4 Cowper's Creatures: The Orpheus of Olney and His "Symptoms of Either Sex" 113

5 The Other Darwin: Posthumanism's Dignified Pantomime, Eleusinian Mysteries of Evolution, and the Descent of Man in Erasmus Darwin's Temple of Nature 155.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-203) and index.

ISBN:

161149673X

9781611496734

OCLC:

1005685918