ENGL 6320 - [Literary Animal Studies: Species, Innovation and the Rise of the Animal in 18th Century Literature]

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

L. Brown.

This course explores a set of novel representations of nonhuman beings in eighteenth-century English literature, defining and tracking the relationship between animals and formal innovation in this period, and projecting that innovation into the nineteenth century. The course will engage and juxtapose various critical concepts that distinguish literary animal studies from the political critique of speciesism, and that include ecocriticism, “thing theory” and the new materialism, theories of radical interspecies politics and communication, and various reconceptualizations of alterity and the “other.” Texts include canonical prose works (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein), late-century poetry (Christopher Smart, Ann Yearsley), materials from the periodical press (Spectator Papers), and selections from popular nonhuman subgenres (it-narrative, lapdog epitaphs).