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1 online resource (240 pages) |
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text txt rdacontent |
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computer c rdamedia |
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online resource cr rdacarrier |
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text file |
| Summary |
"Lucinda Cole's Imperfect Creatures offers the first full-length study of the shifting, unstable, but foundational status of "vermin" as creatures and category in the early modern literary, scientific, and political imagination. In the space between theology and an emergent empiricism, Cole's argument engages a wide historical swath of canonical early modern literary texts--William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Abraham Cowley's The Plagues of Egypt, Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso, Rochester's "A Ramble in St. James's Park," and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Journal of the Plague Year--alongside other nonliterary primary sources and under-examined archival materials from the period, including treatises on animal trials, grain shortages, rabies, and comparative neuroanatomy. As Cole illustrates, human health and demographic problems--notably those of feeding populations periodically stricken by hunger, disease, and famine--were tied to larger questions about food supplies, property laws, national identity, and the theological imperatives that underwrote humankind's claim to dominion over the animal kingdom. In this context, Cole's study indicates, so-called "vermin" occupied liminal spaces between subject and object, nature and animal, animal and the devil, the devil and disease--even reason and madness. This verminous discourse formed a foundational category used to carve out humankind's relationship to an unpredictable, a-rational natural world, but it evolved into a form for thinking about not merely animals but anything that threatened the health of the body politic--humans, animals, and even thoughts."-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-232) and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction: Reading beneath the Grain -- Rats, Witches, Miasma, and Early Modern Theories of Contagion -- Swarming Things: Dearth and the Plagues of Egypt in Wither and Cowley -- "Observe the Frog": Imperfect Creatures, Neuroanatomy, and the Problem of the Human -- Libertine Biopolitics: Dogs, Bitches, and Parasites in Shadwell, Rochester, and Gay -- What Happened to the Rats? Hoarding, Hunger, and Storage on Crusoe's Island -- Afterword: We Have Never Been Perfect. |
| Note |
Print version record. |
| Language |
English. |
| Access |
Open Access EbpS |
| Subject |
English literature -- 17th century -- History and criticism.
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English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
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Pests in literature.
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Human-animal relationships in literature.
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Human-animal relationships.
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Animals as carriers of disease.
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Literature and science -- England -- History -- 17th century.
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Littérature anglaise -- 17e siècle -- Histoire et critique.
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Littérature anglaise -- 18e siècle -- Histoire et critique.
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Animaux et plantes nuisibles dans la littérature.
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Relations homme-animal dans la littérature.
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Relations homme-animal.
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Animaux (Vecteurs de maladies)
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Littérature et sciences -- Angleterre -- Histoire -- 17e siècle.
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NATURE -- Animals -- General.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Renaissance.
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Human-animal relationships in literature. (OCoLC)fst00963492
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Human-animal relationships. (OCoLC)fst00963482
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English literature. (OCoLC)fst00911989
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Animals as carriers of disease. (OCoLC)fst00809570
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Literature and science. (OCoLC)fst01000093
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Pests in literature. (OCoLC)fst01938665
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Science in literature. (OCoLC)fst01108731
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England. (OCoLC)fst01219920
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| Chronological Term |
1600-1799
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
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History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Imperfect creatures. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2016] 9780472072958 (DLC) 2015041734 |
| ISBN |
9780472121557 (e-book) |
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0472121553 |
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9780472900633 (electronic bk.) |
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0472900633 (electronic bk.) |
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9780472052950 (cloth ; alk. paper) |
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9780472072958 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
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0472072951 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
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0472052950 (cloth ; alk. paper) |
| Standard No. |
10.3998/mpub.4424519 |
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AU@ 000057355581 |
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AU@ 000068187794 |
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GBVCP 1008666130 |
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GBVCP 1030560854 |
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