Animal Perception And Literary Language

Animal Perception and Literary Language shows that the perceptual content of reading and writing derives from our embodied minds. Donald Wesling considers how humans, evolved from animals, have learned to code perception of movement into sentences and scenes. The book first specifies terms and questions in animal philosophy and surveys recent work on perception, then describes attributes of multispecies thinking and defines a tradition of writers in this lineage. Finally, the text concludes with literature coming into full focus in twelve case studies of varied readings. Overall, Wesling's book offers not a new method of literary criticism, but a reveal of what we all do with perceptual content when we read.

This prize-winning historical-lyrical poem of 1985, on the unequal power-relations between Russia and Ukraine, darkly resonates in 2023. Alexei Parshchikov's long historical poem, which dates 1985, is one of the major literary documents of the last years of the USSR. Alexandra Smith, in an article of 2006, has called it "perhaps the most important achievement of Russian post-perestroika poetry." Its significance is historical in its irony towards Peter the Great and Charles XII of Sweden in their 1709 battle at Poltava and towards the writer's own dual allegiance to Ukrainian soil and the Russian language. While all previous translations of parts of the poem are in free verse, translator Donald Wesling here carries over the rhyme and meter of the original whole poem. To aid the reader, this volume contains the Russian text, and also the translator's commentary and notes.

Animal Narratology interrogates what it means to narrate, to speak—speak for, on behalf of—and to voice, or represent life beyond the human, which is in itself as different as insects, bears, and dogs are from each other, and yet more, as individual as a single mouse, horse, or puma. The varied contributions to this interdisciplinary Special Issue highlight assumptions about the human perception of, attitude toward, and responsibility for the animals that are read and written about, thus demonstrating that just as “the animal” does not exist, neither does “the human”. In their zoopoetic focus, the analyses are aware that animal narratology ultimately always contains an approximation of an animal perspective in human terms and terminology, yet they make clear that what matters is how the animal is approximated and that there is an effort to approach and encounter the non-human in the first place. Many of the analyses come to the conclusion that literary animals give readers the opportunity to expand their own points of view both on themselves and others by adopting another’s perspective to the degree that such an endeavor is possible. Ultimately, the contributions call for a recognition of the many spaces, moments, and modes in which human lives are entangled with those of animals—one of which is located within the creative bounds of storytelling.

Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.

Animals in Irish Literature and Culture spans the early modern period to the present, exploring colonial, post-colonial, and globalized manifestations of Ireland as country and state as well as the human animal and non-human animal migrations that challenge a variety of literal and cultural borders.

This volume is the first comprehensive guide to current research on animals, animality, and human-animal relations in literature. To reflect the history of literary animal studies to date, its primary focus is literary prose and poetry in English, while also accommodating emergent discussions of the full range of media and contexts with which literary studies engages, especially film and critical theory. User-friendly language, references, even suggestions for further readings are included to help newcomers to the field understand how it has taken shape primarily through recent decades. To further aid teachers, sections are organized by conventions of periodization, and chapters address a range of canonical and popular texts. Bookended by sections devoted to the field’s conceptual foundations and new directions, the volume is designed to set an agenda for literary animal studies for decades to come.