Synopses & Reviews
Gorgeous Beasts takes a fresh look at the place of animals in history and art. Refusing the traditional subordination of animals to humans, the essays gathered here examine a rich variety of ways animals contribute to culture: as living things, as scientific specimens, as food, weapons, tropes, and occasions for thought and creativity. History and culture set the terms for this inquiry. As history changes, so do the ways animals participate in culture.
Gorgeous Beasts offers a series of discontinuous but probing studies of the forms their participation takes.
This collection presents the work of a wide range of scholars, critics, and thinkers from diverse disciplines: philosophy, literature, history, geography, economics, art history, cultural studies, and the visual arts. By approaching animals from such different perspectives, these essays broaden the scope of animal studies to include specialists and nonspecialists alike, inviting readers from all backgrounds to consider the place of animals in history and art. Combining provocative critical insights with arresting visual imagery, Gorgeous Beasts advances a challenging new appreciation of animals as co-inhabitants and co-creators of culture.
Aside from the editors, the contributors are Dean Bavington, Ron Broglio, Mark Dion, Erica Fudge, Cecilia Novero, Harriet Ritvo, Nigel Rothfels, Sajay Samuel, and Pierre Serna.
Synopsis
A collection of essays examining the place of animals in history and culture and their influence on life and art, from the Renaissance to the present.
About the Author
Joan B. Landes is Walter L. and Helen Ferree Professor of Early Modern History and Women’s Studies at Penn State University.
Paula Young Lee is an independent scholar and the editor of Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (2008).
Paul Youngquist is Professor of English at the University of Colorado.
Table of Contents
ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist
1 Animal Subjects: Between Nature and Invention in Buffon’s Natural History Illustrations
Joan B. Landes
2 Renaissance Animal Things
Erica Fudge
3 The Cujo Effect
Paul Youngquist
4 On Vulnerability: Studies from Life That Ought Not to Be Copied
Ron Broglio
5 The Rights of Man and the Rights of Animality at the End of the Eighteenth Century
Pierre Serna
Translated by Vito Caiati and Joan B. Landes
6 Calling the Wild
Harriet Ritvo
7 Trophies and Taxidermy
Nigel Rothfels
8 Fishing for Biomass
Sajay Samuel and Dean Bavington
9 Daniel Spoerri’s Carnival of Animals
Cecilia Novero
A Conversation with the Artist Mark Dion
Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index