Animal Victims in Modern Fiction : From Sanctity to Sacrifice / Marian Scholtmeijer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scholtmeijer, Marian, Author.

Series:

Heritage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiction--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Comparative literature--Themes, motives.

Comparative literature.

Animal sacrifice.

Victims in literature.

Sacrifice in literature.

Human-animal relationships in literature.

Animals in literature.

Genre:

Critiques litteraires.

Literary criticism.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 330 pages)

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The Darwinian revolution profoundly altered society's conception of animals. Marian Scholtmeijer explores the ways in which modern literature has reflected this change in its attempts to deal with the reality of the autonomous animal and the animal victim. Scholtmeijer considers works of fiction dealing with animal victims in the wild and in urban settings, how they are used to represent human sexual dilemmas, and how the hopes and disillusionments invested in myth generate animal victims. A broad range of authors is represented: Jack London, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Frederick Philip Grove, Mary Webb, Gustave Flaubert, Timothy Findley, John Steinbeck D.H. Lawrence, Jerzy Kosinski, Stephen King, and many others. Her analysis suggests that the issue of the victimization of animals is much more tangled than we might like to believe. Scholtmeijer finds that animals resist assimilation into cultural products, and that, regarded with due attention, they possess a certain power over the themes and narratives that contain them.

Contents:

The animal victim in its cultural context : a brief history

The animal victim in its cultural context : some theoretical considerations

Home turf : animal victims in the wild

The urban context : dispossessed people and victimized animals

Animal victims and human sexuality : body trouble

Myth, disillusionment, and animal victims : modern variations upon animal sacrifice

The doubly victimized animal.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [301]-313) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)

ISBN:

1-4875-7634-X

OCLC:

1105297999