Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern (Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture)

Reading Literary Animals explores the status and representation of animals in literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. Essays by leading scholars in the field examine various figurative, agential, imaginative, ethical, and affective aspects of literary encounters with animality, showing how practices of close reading provoke new ways of thinking about animals and the texts in which they appear. Through investigations of works by Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and Ted Hughes, among many others, Reading Literary Animals demonstrates the value of distinctively literary animal studies.

Karen L. Edwards is Professor of English at the University of Exeter, UK.

Derek Ryan is Senior Lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University of Kent, UK.

Jane Spencer is Professor of English at the University of Exeter, UK.