The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales

The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales
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Shakespeare wrote of lions, shrews, horned toads, curs, mastiffs, and hellhounds. But the word â€œanimalâ€ itself only appears very rarely in his work, which was in keeping with sixteenth-century usage. As Laurie Shannon reveals in The Accommodated Animal, the modern human / animal divide first came strongly into play in the seventeenth century, with Descartesâ€™s famous formulation that reason sets humans above other species: â€œI think, therefore I am.â€ Before that moment, animals could claim a firmer place alongside humans in a larger vision of belonging, or what she terms cosmopolity.
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With Shakespeare as her touchstone, Shannon explores the creaturely dispensation that existed until Descartes. She finds that early modern writers used classical natural history and readings of Genesis to credit animals with various kinds of stakeholdership, prerogative, and entitlement, employing the language of politics in a constitutional vision of cosmic membership. Using this political idiom to frame cross-species relations, Shannon argues, carried with it the notion that animals possess their own investments in the world, a point distinct from the question of whether animals have reason. It also enabled a sharp critique of the tyranny of humankind. By answering â€œthe question of the animalâ€ historically, The Accommodated Animal makes a brilliant contribution to cross-disciplinary debates engaging animal studies, political theory, intellectual history, and literary studies.
Country USA
Brand University of Chicago Press
Manufacturer University of Chicago Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber Illustrated
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780226924175
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Chicago Press
Manufacturer	University of Chicago Press
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	Illustrated
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
EANs	9780226924175
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales

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