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Romantic Beasts
Pervasion, Eccentricity, Exhibition
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Edited by:
Michael Demson
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With contributions by:
Alastair Hunt
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
By staging human-animal encounters, Romantic literature and art repeatedly questioned how "human" animals could be and how "animal" humans in fact are. Romantic-era authors and artists often depicted perplexing animal intrusions upon humans. Sometimes the intruders were mystifying or terrifying, like Coleridge’s albatross or Poe’s raven; sometimes they were mundane, as in “The Swallow” by Smith or “To a Mouse” by Burns—regardless, encounters with animal-others occasioned Romantic musings. This collection builds on existing scholarship while deploying new methodological approaches from gender studies, posthumanism, postcolonialism, disability studies, and digital studies to deepen our understanding of why animal-human encounters were so prevalent in the creative work and cultural discourse of the Romantic period, including the rhetoric of social movements like transatlantic abolitionism. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate the range and complexity of Romantic representations of human-animal interactions and conceptualizations of animality, nonhuman life, and not-wholly-human life.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Author / Editor information
MICHAEL DEMSON is a professor of English at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.
CHRISTOPHER R. CLASON is a professor emeritus at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
CHRISTOPHER R. CLASON is a professor emeritus at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
Reviews
"By drawing on the diverse but complementary perspectives of Romanticism and animal studies, Romantic Beasts advances the study of both fields to a new international and interdisciplinary level. This innovative and exciting collection of wide-ranging scholarly essays, expertly curated and comprehensively introduced by the two editors, is a fitting tribute to the polymathic Romanticism expertise of Professor Burwick to whom this volume is dedicated."— Eugene Stelzig, author of The Romantic Subject in Autobiography: Rousseau and Goethe
"An excellent addition to the ever-expanding field of animal studies, Romantic Beasts invites consideration of non-human animals large and small, domesticated and wild, both familiar and exotic to the nineteenth-century European public. Here are animals on page and stage and in the plastic arts, real and allegorical, in chapters sure to stimulate wider explorations."— Glynis Ridley, coeditor of Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years
"Romantic Beasts enriches our discussions of the other-than-human, reaching across prominent as well as popular works in English, German, and French Romanticism, and connecting animal studies with race, slavery, and imperialism. These new perspectives will shape our understanding of literary animals, and extend the lively current debates around posthumanist, environmentalist, and affective approaches."— Laura Brown, author of The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Cent
"In its timely and authoritative discussion of animals in the context of Romanticism, this grouping of essays edited by Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason offers a gap-filling understanding of an important locus of early nineteenth-century literary imagery. Informed by a wide array of texts, these studies are full of fascinating details and illuminating moments, all well-written and often corrective. Also a judicious compilation and integration of insights, this assemblage of studies also suggests, by implication, taking a new look at Romanticism itself. Romantic Beasts is a welcome contribution to literary history and criticism and a must-read for anyone interested in animalia and its cultural connections."— Larry H. Peer, editor of Transgressive Romanticism
Topics
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Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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PART ONE: The Pervasion of Animal Figures
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Alastair Hunt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Collecting the South Pacific in Mary Ann Parker’s A Voyage Round the World Pamela Buck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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John Gardner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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PART TWO: The Eccentricity of Animal Figures
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Romantic Birds Jane Spencer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Christopher R. Clason Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Romantic- Era Zoophytes, the Great Chain of Being, and Posthumanist Life Allison Dushane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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PART THREE: The Exhibition of Human-Animal Entanglements
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French Art- World Caricature, the Animal Menagerie, and the Digital Humanities Kathryn Desplanque Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Prob lems of Communication and Politics in French Romantic Painting Peter Erickson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Frederick Burwick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF |
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 12, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781684485581
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
239
Other:
10 color and 17 B-W images
eBook ISBN:
9781684485581
Keywords for this book
environmental humanities; Romantic literature; Romanticism; animality; animal studies; literary animals; abolition; Aboriginal; Mary Ann Parker; A Voyage Round the World; Edmund Burke; Waiting for Godot; Samuel Beckett; swine; pig; Romantic birds; poodles; E.T.A. Hoffmann; Lebensansichten des Katers Murr; The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr; Eugène Delacroix; Mephistopheles; Faust; Goethe; Zoophytes; Posthumanist; creature; monkeys; donkeys; French Art-World; caricature; menagerie; Digital Humanities; horses; Romantic art; Romantic paintings; French Romanticism; beasts; melodrama; Gothic paintings; Animal rights; Eclecticism; Human-animal relations; Industrialism; Imperialism; British Empire; PETA; Emancipation; Jeremy Bentham; Natural history; Nature; Importexport of animals; Working class; To a Skylark; Animal symbolism; The Swallow; Ann Radcliffe; Dorothy Wordsworth; Animal poetry; German Romanticism; Animal perspectives; German literary animals; Great Chain of Being; Abraham Trembley; French Caricature; Art world satire; Nineteenth Century art; Théodore Géricault; La Belle Sauvage; Aesthetic Theory; The sublime; Monsters; James Cook; Apes; Dogs; Elephant; Samuel Coleridge; Erasmus Darwin; Gulliver’s Travels; The Floating Kingdom or The Last Voyage of Captain Cook
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
