The political lives of Victorian animals : liberal creatures in literature and culture / Anna Feuerstein, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feuerstein, Anna, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animal rights--Great Britain.

Animal rights.

Animal welfare--Great Britain.

Animal welfare.

Animals in literature.

Human-animal relationships in literature.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xi, 250 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

During the Victorian era, animals were increasingly viewed not as property or utility, but as thinking, feeling subjects worthy of inclusion within a political community. This book re-examines the nineteenth-century British animal welfare movement and animal characters in the Victorian novel in light of liberal thought, and argues that liberalism was a decisive factor in determining the cultural, ideological, and material makeup of animal-human relationships. While the animal welfare movement often represented animals as desiring submission to the human, animal characters in the Victorian novel critiqued the liberal norms that led to the oppression of both animals and humans. Through readings of animal rights legislation, animal welfare texts, and writings by Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner, Anna Feuerstein outlines the remarkably powerful political role that animals played in the Victorian novel, as they offer ways to move beyond the exclusionary and contradictory strategies of liberal thought.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-246) and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781108492966

1108492967

OCLC:

1083674371