Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008

The period of the Enlightenment saw great changes in the way animals were seen. The codifying and categorizing impulse of the age of reason saw sharp lines drawn between different animal species and between animals and humans. In 1600, "beasts" were still seen as the foils and adversaries of human reason. By 1800, animals had become exemplars of sentiment and compassion, the new standards of truth and morals. A new age had dawned, a time when humans admired animals and sought to recover their own animality.

A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary symbolism, hunting, domestication, sports and entertainment, science, philosophy, and art.

Table of contents

Introduction: The Animal Witness
Matthew Senior, Oberlin College

1. The Souls of Men and Beasts, 1637-1764
Matthew Senior, Oberlin College

2. The War Against Animals: The Culture of the Hunt in Early Modern France
Amy Warthesen, Cornell University

3. From Sheep to Meat, From Pets to People, Animal Domestication 1600-1800
Karen Raber, University of Mississippi

4. Inside and Outside: Animal Activity and the Red Bull Playhouse, St. John Street
Eva Griffith, University of Durham

5. Natural History, Natural Philosophy, and Animals
Anita Guerrini, University of California-Santa Barbara

6. Animality and Anthropology in Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Luc Guichet, Collège de Philosophie, Paris

7. Portraits of Animals, 1600-1800
Madeleine Pinault-Sorensen, Musée du Louvre

Notes
Bibliography