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Animals, as Lvi-Strauss wrote, are good to think with. This collection addresses and reassesses the variety of ways in which animals were used and thought about in Renaissance culture, challenging contemporary as well as historic views of the boundaries and hierarchies humans presume the natural world to contain. Taking as its starting point the popularity of speaking animals in sixteenth-century literature and ending with the decline of the imperial Mnagerie during the French Revolution, "Renaissance Beasts" uses the lens of human-animal relationships to view issues as diverse as human status and power, diet, civilization and the political life, religion and anthropocentrism, spectacle and entertainment, language, science and skepticism, and domestic and courtly cultures.Within these pages scholars from a variety of disciplines discuss numerous kinds of texts - literary, dramatic, philosophical, religious, political - by writers including Calvin, Montaigne, Sidney, Shakespeare, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke. Through analysis of these and other writers, "Renaissance Beasts" uncovers new and arresting interpretations of Renaissance culture and the broader social assumptions glimpsed through views on matters such as pet ownership and meat consumption. "Renaissance Beasts" is certainly about animals, but of the many species discussed, it is ultimately humankind that comes under the greatest scrutiny
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R ENAISSANCE % B EASTS % Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures E dited By Erica Fudge 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page i renaissance beasts 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page ii 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page iii renaissance beasts Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures Edited by Erica Fudge University of Illinois Press Urbana and Chicago 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page iv © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America c 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Renaissance beasts : of animals, humans, and other wonderful creatures / edited by Erica Fudge. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-252-02880-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Animals and civilization—Europe—History—16th century. 2. Animals and civilization—Europe—History—17th century. 3. Animals (Philosophy)—Europe—History—16th century. 4. Animals (Philosophy)—Europe—History—17th century. I. Fudge, Erica. ql85.r455 2004 590′.9031—dc21 2003007986 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page v contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Erica Fudge 1. Unpicking the Seam: Talking Animals and Reader Pleasure in Early Modern Satire 19 Kathryn Perry 2. “Bitches and Queens”: Pets and Perversion at the Court of France’s Henri III 37 Juliana Schiesari 3. Hairy on the Inside: Metamorphosis and Civility in English Werewolf Texts 50 S. J. Wiseman 4. Saying Nothing Concerning the Same: On Dominion, Purity, and Meat in Early Modern England 70 Erica Fudge 5. “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?”: Shakespeare’s Animations 87 Erica Sheen 6. Government by Beagle: The Impersonal Rule of James VI and I 101 Alan Stewart 7. Reading, Writing, and Riding Horses in Early Modern England: James Shirley’s Hyde Park (1632) and Gervase Markham’s Cavelarice (1607) 116 Elspeth Graham 00.front.i-viii/Fudge 12/12/03 10:52 AM Page vi 8. “Can ye no