The Political Lives of Victorian Animals by Anna Feuerstein, Hardcover, 9781108492966 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Political Lives of Victorian Animals

Liberal Creatures in Literature and Culture

Author: Anna Feuerstein   Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Examines how liberal thought influenced representations of animals within nineteenth-century animal welfare discourse and the Victorian novel.

Anna Feuerstein offers innovative readings of the politics of animal characters in the Victorian novel, and shows the limitations of liberalism as a framework for animal rights. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Victorian literature and culture, and the representation of animals in literature.

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Summary

Examines how liberal thought influenced representations of animals within nineteenth-century animal welfare discourse and the Victorian novel.

Anna Feuerstein offers innovative readings of the politics of animal characters in the Victorian novel, and shows the limitations of liberalism as a framework for animal rights. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Victorian literature and culture, and the representation of animals in literature.

Read more

Description

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.

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Critic Reviews

“'This well-written, theoretically sophisticated study makes a major contribution to the growing body of critical treatments of animals in Victorian literature and culture.' R. D. Morrison, Choice”

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About the Author

Anna Feuerstein is Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.

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Product Details

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published
4th July 2019
Pages
270
ISBN
9781108492966

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