Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century : From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems and Philosophy

How did humans respond to the eighteenth-century discovery of countless new species of animals? This book explores the gamut of intense human-animal interactions: from love to cultural identifications, moral reflections, philosophical debates, classification systems, mechanical copies, insults and literary creativity.

Dogs, cats and horses, of course, play central roles. But this volume also features human reflections upon parrots, songbirds, monkeys, a rhino, an elephant, pigs, and geese – all the way through to the admired silkworms and the not-so-admired bookworms.

An exceptionally wide array of source materials are used in this volume’s ten separate contributions, plus the editorial introduction, to demonstrate this diversity. As eighteenth-century humans came to realise that they too are animals, they had to recast their relationships with their fellow living-beings on Planet Earth. And these considerations remain very much live ones to this day.

Stefanie Stockhorst is Professor for Early Modern German Literature at the University of Potsdam. She was President of the German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2014–18; 2008–10 Vice-President) and is an Elected Member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) since 2019.

Jürgen Overhoff is Professor for the History of Education at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. He is President of the German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (since 2018) and Delegate Member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) since 2018.

Penelope J. Corfield is Professor Emeritus of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University UK, and President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Her writings focus upon British social, cultural and urban history in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as general theories of history.