Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare, Descartes, and Animal Studies

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Rebecca Ann Bach

Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature

Shakespeare, Descartes, and Animal Studies

Rebecca Ann Bach

$326

Hardback

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English

Routledge
10 August 2017

Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Shakespeare studies & criticism; Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600; Animals & society

Series: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture

This book explores how humans in the Renaissance lived with, attended to, and considered the minds, feelings, and sociality of other creatures. It examines how Renaissance literature and natural history display an unequal creaturely world: all creatures were categorized hierarchically. However, post-Cartesian readings of Shakespeare and other Renaissance literature have misunderstood Renaissance hierarchical creaturely relations, including human relations. Using critical animal studies work and new materialist theory, Bach argues that attending closely to creatures and objects in texts by Shakespeare and other writers exposes this unequal world and the use and abuse of creatures, including people. The book also adds significantly to animal studies by showing how central bird sociality and voices were to Renaissance human culture, with many believing that birds were superior to some humans in song, caregiving, and companionship. Bach shows how Descartes, a central figure in the transition to modern ideas about creatures, lived isolated from humans and other creatures and denied ancient knowledge about other creatures’ minds, especially bird minds. As significantly, Bach shows how and why Descartes’ ideas appealed to human grandiosity. Asking how Renaissance categorizations of creatures differ so much from modern classifications, and why those modern classifications have shaped so much animal studies work, this book offers significant new readings of Shakespeare’s and other Renaissance texts. It will contribute to a range of fields, including Renaissance literature, history, animal studies, new materialism, and the environmental humanities.

By: Rebecca Ann Bach
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 430g
ISBN: 9781138673007
ISBN 10: 1138673005
Series: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 10 August 2017
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Rebecca Ann Bach is Professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.