Brutal Reasoning

Early modern English thinkers were fascinated by the subject of animal rationality, even before the appearance of Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637) and its famous declaration of the automatism of animals. But as Erica Fudge relates in Brutal Reasoning, the discussions were not as straightforward—or as reflexively anthropocentric—as has been assumed. Surveying a wide range of texts-religious, philosophical, literary, even comic-Fudge explains the crucial role that reason played in conceptualizations of the human and the animal, as well as the distinctions between the two. Brutal Reasoning looks at the ways in which humans were conceptualized, at what being "human" meant, and at how humans could lose their humanity. It also takes up the questions of what made an animal an animal, why animals were studied in the early modern period, and at how people understood, and misunderstood, what they saw when they did look. From the influence of classical thinking on the human-animal divide and debates surrounding the rationality of women, children, and Native Americans to the frequent references in popular and pedagogical texts to Morocco the Intelligent Horse, Fudge gives a new and vital context to the human perception of animals in this period. At the same time, she challenges overly simplistic notions about early modern attitudes to animals and about the impact of those attitudes on modern culture.

The essays in this volume interrogate the unique and often problematic relationship between early modern cultural studies and ecocriticism, providing theoretical insights and models for a future practice that successfully wed the two disciplines.

This book analyzes the interaction between gender and species in Chaucer's poetry and strives to understand his adaptation of medieval discourse through an ecofeminist lens. Works that either speak of animals, or those with animals speaking, give new insights into the medieval textual handling of the 'others' of society.

Shakespeare | Sense explores the intersection of Shakespeare and sensory studies, asking what sensation can tell us about early modern drama and poetry, and, conversely, how Shakespeare explores the senses in his literary craft, his fictional worlds, and his stagecraft. 15 substantial new essays by leading Shakespeareans working in sensory studies and related disciplines interrogate every aspect of Shakespeare and sense, from the place of hearing, smell, sight, touch, and taste in early modern life, literature, and performance culture, through to the significance of sensation in 21st century engagements with Shakespeare on stage, screen and page. The volume explores and develops current methods for studying Shakespeare and sensation, reflecting upon the opportunities and challenges created by this emergent and influential area of scholarly enquiry. Many chapters develop fresh readings of particular plays and poems, from Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, and The Tempest to less-studied works such as The Comedy of Errors, Venus and Adonis, Troilus and Cressida, and Cymbeline.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, new anatomical investigations of the brain and the nervous system, together with a renewed interest in comparative anatomy, allowed doctors and philosophers to ground their theories on sense perception, the emergence of human intelligence, and the soul/body relationship in modern science. They investigated the anatomical structures and the physiological processes underlying the rise, differentiation, and articulation of human cognitive activities, and looked for the “anatomical roots” of the specificity of human intelligence when compared to other forms of animal sensibility. This edited volume focuses on medical and philosophical debates on human intelligence and animal perception in the early modern age, providing fresh insights into the influence of medical discourse on the rise of modern philosophical anthropology. Contributions from distinguished historians of philosophy and medicine focus on sixteenth-century zoological, psychological, and embryological discourses on man; the impact of mechanism and comparative anatomy on philosophical conceptions of body and soul; and the key status of sensibility in the medical and philosophical enlightenment.

Lesser Living Creatures examines literary and cultural texts from early modern England in order to understand how people in that era thought about—and with—insect and arachnid life. The conversations in this two-volume set address the collaborative, multigenerational research that produced early modern natural history and provide new insights into the old question of what it means to be human in a world populated by beasts large and small. Volume 2, Concepts, explores ideas that cut across species, insect and otherwise, both building on and invigorating critical vocabularies developed over nearly two decades of early modern animal studies. The contributors explore topics such as the medical and culinary consumption of insects; extermination campaigns; the auditory and emotive effects of a swarm; insects and politics; and notions of infestation, stinging, and creeping. Throughout, they illuminate how early modern science and literature worked as intersecting systems of knowledge production about the natural world and show definitively how insect life was, and remains, intimately entangled with human life. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume include Lucinda Cole, Frances E. Dolan, Lowell Duckert, Andrew Fleck, Rebecca Laroche, Jennifer Munroe, Amy L. Tigner, Jessica Lynn Wolfe, Derek Woods, and Julian Yates.

The Bureaucracy of Empathy revolves around two central questions: What is pain? And how do we recognize, understand, and ameliorate the pain of nonhuman animals? Shira Shmuely investigates these ethical issues through a close and careful history of the origins, implementation, and enforcement of the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act of Parliament, which for the first time imposed legal restrictions on animal experimentation and mandated official supervision of procedures "calculated to give pain" to animal subjects. Exploring how scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers wrestled with the problem of animal pain and its perception, Shmuely traces in depth and detail how the Act was enforced, the medical establishment's initial resistance and then embrace of regulation, and the challenges from anti-vivisection advocates who deemed it insufficient protection against animal suffering. She shows how a "bureaucracy of empathy" emerged to support and administer the legislation, navigating incongruent interpretations of pain. This crucial moment in animal law and ethics continues to inform laws regulating the treatment of nonhuman animals in laboratories, farms, and homes around the worlds to the present.

Part I. Animals in the landscape of law, politics, and public policy. Animal rights / Gary Francione and Anna Charlton -- Animals in political theory / Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka --,Animals as living property / David Favre -- The human-animal bond / James Serpell -- Animal sheltering / Leslie Irvine -- Roaming dogs / Arnold Arluke and Kate Atema -- Misothery : contempt for animals and nature, its origins, purposes, and repercussions / James B. Mason -- Continental approaches to animals and animality / Ralph Acampora -- Animals as legal subjects / Paul Waldau -- The struggle for compassion and justice through critical animal studies / Carol Gigliotti -- Interspecies dialogue and animal ethics : the feminist care perspective / Josephine Donovan -- Part II. Animal intentionality, agency, and reflexive thinking. Cetacean cognition / Lori Marino -- History and animal agencies / Chris Pearson -- Animals as sentient commodities / Rhoda WilPart I.kie -- Animal work / Jocelyne Porcher -- Animals as reflexive thinkers : the Aponoian paradigm / Mark Rowlands and Susana Monsó -- Part III. Animals as objects in science, food, spectacle, and sport. The ethics of animal research / Bernard Rollin -- The ethics of food animal production / Paul Thompson -- Animals as scientific objects / Mike Michael -- The problem with zoos / Randy Malamud -- Wolf hunting and the ethics of predator control / John Vucetich and Michael P. --Nelson -- Part IV. Animals in cultural representations. Practice and ethics of the use of animals in contemporary art /Joe Zammit-Lucia -- Animals in folklore / Boria Sax -- Part V. Animals in ecosystems. Archaeozoology / Juliet Cluton-Brock -- Animals and ecological science / Anita Guerrini -- Staging privilege, proximity, and "extreme animal tourism" / Jane Desmond -- Commensal species / Terry O'Connor -- Lively cities : people, animals, and urban ecosystems / Marcus Owens and Jennifer Wolch -- Animals in religion / Stephen R.L. Clark.