Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British ModernismAnimal Subjects identifies a new understanding of animals in modernist literature and science. Drawing on Darwin's evolutionary theory, British writers and scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to think of animals as subjects dwelling in their own animal worlds. Both science and literature aimed to capture the complexity of animal life, and their shared attention to animals pulled the two disciplines closer together. It led scientists to borrow the literary techniques of fiction and poetry, and writers to borrow the observational methods of zoology. Animal Subjects tracks the coevolution of literature and zoology in works by H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and modern scientists including Julian Huxley, Charles Elton, and J. B. S. Haldane. Examining the rise of ecology, ethology, and animal psychology, this book shows how new, subject-centered approaches to the study of animals transformed literature and science in the modernist period. |
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Animal Subjects: Volume 1: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism Caroline Hovanec Limited preview - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Aepyornis aesthetic Aldous Huxley animal behavior Animal Ecology animal minds animal perspectives animal studies animal subjectivity animal worlds anthropomorphism Antic Hay ants argues Auden Beasts and Flowers biologists biology bird’s birds Cambridge University Press century Charles Elton Chelifer claim comparative psychology Complete Poems consciousness courtship creatures critics culture D. H. Lawrence Darwin Darwinian describes Ecocriticism emotions Empire essay ethical ethologists ethology evolution evolutionary theory extinction fables Fiction fish Flush Freud grebes Gumbril Haldane Haldane’s Howard human Huxley’s Ibid imagine instincts intellectual J. B. S. Haldane Julian Huxley knowledge laboratory Lawrence’s literary literature and science living modern modernist Morgan narrative narrator natural history novel observation philosophical play quote rats readers Rohman Russell Russell’s scientific scientists sense sexual selection Shearwater Short Stories snail speaker species struggle for existence Sultzbach Tardigrades thin description things Tinbergen tion tortoise twentieth twentieth-century understanding Victorian Virginia Woolf vision vivisection Wells’s whale writing zoological
Bibliographic information
| Title | Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and British Modernism |
| Author | Caroline Hovanec |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2018 |
| ISBN | 1108428398, 9781108428392 |
| Length | 232 pages |
| Subjects | › › › Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory Science / Life Sciences / Biology Science / Life Sciences / General Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / General |
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