The Animal Claim : Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice / Tobias Menely.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Menely, Tobias, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--18th century--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Animals in literature.

Human-animal relationships in literature.

Animal rights--Moral and ethical aspects.

Animal rights.

Animal rights--Political aspects.

Communication--Philosophy--History.

Communication.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the eighteenth century, some of the most popular British poetry showed a responsiveness to animals that anticipated the later language of animal rights. Such poems were widely cited in later years by legislators advocating animal welfare laws like Martin's Act of 1822, which provided protections for livestock. In The Animal Claim, Tobias Menely links this poetics of sensibility with Enlightenment political philosophy, the rise of the humanitarian public, and the fate of sentimentality, as well as longstanding theoretical questions about voice as a medium of communication. In the Restoration and eighteenth century, philosophers emphasized the role of sympathy in collective life and began regarding the passionate expression humans share with animals, rather than the spoken or written word, as the elemental medium of community. Menely shows how poetry came to represent this creaturely voice and, by virtue of this advocacy, facilitated the development of a viable discourse of animal rights in the emerging public sphere. Placing sensibility in dialogue with classical and early-modern antecedents as well as contemporary animal studies, The Animal Claim uncovers crucial connections between eighteenth-century poetry; theories of communication; and post-absolutist, rights-based politics.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. The Significant Voice: Address and the Animal Sign

2. Creaturely Origins: Enlightenment Naturalism and the Animal Voice

3. The Addressive Animal: The Augustans and "Tyrant Custom"

4. Creaturely Advocacy: Poetic Vocation in the Age of Sensibility

5. Sensibilities into Statutes: Animal Rights and the Afterlife of Sensibility

Afterword: The Law and the Factory

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226239392

022623939X

9780226239422

022623942X

OCLC:

904398367