Romantic Beasts

Reviews / Votes

"An excellent addition to the ever-expanding field of animal studies, Romantic Beasts invites consideration of non-human animals large and small, domesticated and wild, both familiar and exotic to the nineteenth-century European public. Here are animals on page and stage and in the plastic arts, real and allegorical, in chapters sure to stimulate wider explorations." - Glynis Ridley (coeditor of Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years) "Romantic Beasts enriches our discussions of the other-than-human, reaching across prominent as well as popular works in English, German, and French Romanticism, and connecting animal studies with race, slavery, and imperialism. These new perspectives will shape our understanding of literary animals, and extend the lively current debates around posthumanist, environmentalist, and affective approaches." - Laura Brown (author of The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Cent) "In its timely and authoritative discussion of animals in the context of Romanticism, this grouping of essays edited by Michael Demson and Christopher R. Clason offers a gap-filling understanding of an important locus of early nineteenth-century literary imagery. Informed by a wide array of texts, these studies are full of fascinating details and illuminating moments, all well-written and often corrective. Also a judicious compilation and integration of insights, this assemblage of studies also suggests, by implication, taking a new look at Romanticism itself. Romantic Beasts is a welcome contribution to literary history and criticism and a must-read for anyone interested in animalia and its cultural connections." - Larry H. Peer (editor of Transgressive Romanticism) "By drawing on the diverse but complementary perspectives of Romanticism and animal studies, Romantic Beasts advances the study of both fields to a new international and interdisciplinary level. This innovative and exciting collection of wide-ranging scholarly essays, expertly curated and comprehensively introduced by the two editors, is a fitting tribute to the polymathic Romanticism expertise of Professor Burwick to whom this volume is dedicated." - Eugene Stelzig (author of The Romantic Subject in Autobiography: Rousseau and Goethe)