Reading Cats and Dogs: Companion Animals in World Literature

Throughout the world, people spend much of their time with animal companions of various kinds, frequently with cats and dogs. What meanings do we make of these relationships? In the ecocritical collection Reading cats and Dogs, a diverse array of scholars considers the philosophy, literature, and film devoted to human relationships with companion species. In addition to illuminating famous animal stories by Beatrix Potter, Jack London, Italo Svevo, and Michael Ondaatje, readers are introduced to the dog poems of Shuntaro Tanikawa, a Turkish documentary on stray cats as neighborhood companions, and the representation of diverse animal companions in Cameroonian novels. Focusing on “Stray and Feral Companions,” “The Usefulness of Companion Animals,” and “Problematizing Companion Animals,” Reading Cats and Dogs aims both to confirm and topple readers’ assumptions about the fellow travelers with whom we share our lives, our streets and fields, and our planet. Fifteen contributors from various countries reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and psychological complexities of our multispecies relationships, demonstrating the richness of ecocritical animal studies.

Qianqian Cheng obtained her PhD in English from the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France. She has taught English at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and Chinese at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès.

Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA, where has been teaching since 2012-previously he was a professor at Texas State University and the University of Nevada, Reno. He served as founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995, and since 1995 he has edited ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment for ASLE and Oxford University Press. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of twenty-seven books, including, most recently, The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran). His forthcoming books include Nature in Literary Studies (coedited with Peter Remien) for Cambridge University Press's Critical Concepts Series. He coedits Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Routledge Environmental Humanities with Joni Adamson and Yuki Masami.