The Inheritance of Animal Symbols in Modern Literature and World Culture

This book argues that the seemingly eclipsed traditional use of animal symbols as a functioning grammar in world art, literature and culture has been effectively adopted by exponents of modern literature and that cultures such as India and China apprehend reality through such symbols. The book examines the animal symbols of the fable, the bestiary, the beast satire and myth and ritual as revivified in the work of Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot and Franz Kafka and as evoked in Hinduism and traditional Chinese culture.