This book studies the various definitions of animal nature proposed by nineteenth-century currents of thought in France. It is based on an examination of a number of key thinkers and writers, some well known (for example, Michelet and Lamartine), others largely forgotten (for example, Gleizes and Reynaud). At the centre of the book lies the idea that knowledge of animals is often knowledge of something else, that the primary referentiality is overlaid with additional levels of meaning. In nineteenth-century France thinking about animals (their future and their past) became a way of thinking about power relations in society, for example about the status of women and the problem of the labouring classes. This book analyses how animals as symbols externalize and mythologize human fears and wishes, but it also demonstrates that animals have an existence in and for themselves and are not simply useful counters functioning within discourse.
Consumable Reading and Children's Literature explores how multisensory experiences enhance early childhood literacy practices through material and sensory interactions. Embodied engagements that focus on the gustatory experience and, in particular, the sense of taste are investigated by studying food-related narratives. Children’s literature and different reading scenarios involving consumable objects, packages, tableware and utensils are scrutinized. Surfaces, the underlying mechanisms that support children’s literature, are considered in connection to emerging media and groundbreaking technologies. The interdisciplinary nature of this work draws on material and surface science, human-computer interaction, arts and food studies. As innovation and everyday materials meet, the potential of hybrid narratives mimicking synesthesia emerges with discussions on cross-modal learning. This monograph will inspire the interest of not only students, teachers, scholars of children’s literature and child development but also researchers and practitioners across various artistic and scientific disciplines.
From the recent spate of equine deaths on racetracks to protests demanding the removal of mounted Confederate soldier statues to the success and appeal of War Horse, there is no question that horses still play a role in our lives—though fewer and fewer of us actually interact with them. In Precarious Partners, Kari Weil takes readers back to a time in France when horses were an inescapable part of daily life. This was a time when horse ownership became an attainable dream not just for soldiers but also for middle-class children; when natural historians argued about animal intelligence; when the prevalence of horse beatings led to the first animal protection laws; and when the combined magnificence and abuse of these animals inspired artists, writers, and riders alike. Weil traces the evolving partnerships established between French citizens and their horses through this era. She considers the newly designed “races” of workhorses who carried men from the battlefield to the hippodrome, lugged heavy loads through the boulevards, or paraded women riders, amazones, in the parks or circus halls—as well as those unfortunate horses who found their fate on a dinner plate. Moving between literature, painting, natural philosophy, popular cartoons, sports manuals, and tracts of public hygiene, Precarious Partners traces the changing social, political, and emotional relations with these charismatic creatures who straddled conceptions of pet and livestock in nineteenth-century France.
Romantic Sustainability is a collection of sixteen essays that examine the British Romantic era in ecocritical terms. Written by scholars from five continents, this international collection addresses the works of traditional Romantic writers such as John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Samuel Coleridge but also delves into ecocritical topics related to authors added to the canon more recently, such as Elizabeth Inchbald and John Clare. The essays examine geological formations, clouds, and landscapes as well as the posthuman and the monstrous. The essays are grouped into rough categories that start with inspiration and the imagination before moving to the varied types of consumption associated with human interaction with the natural world. Subsequent essays in the volume focus on environmental destruction, monstrous creations, and apocalypse. The common theme is sustainability, as each contributor examines Romantic ideas that intersect with ecocriticism and relates literary works to questions about race, gender, religion, and identity.
Nineteenth-century Britain was one of the birthplaces of modern vegetarianism in the west, and was to become a reform movement attracting thousands of people. From the Vegetarian Society's foundation in 1847, men, women and their families abandoned conventional diet for reasons as varied as self-advancement via personal thrift, dissatisfaction with medical orthodoxy, repugnance towards animal cruelty and the belief that carnivorism stimulated alcoholism and bellicosity. They joined in the pursuit of a more perfect society in which food reform combined with causes such as socialism and land reform. James Gregory provides an extensive exploration of the movement, with its often colourful and sometimes eccentric leaders and grass-roots supporters. He explores the rich culture of branch associations, competing national societies, proliferating restaurants and food stores and experiments in vegetarian farms and colonies. 'Of Victorians and Vegetarians' examines the wider significance of Victorian vegetarians, embracing concerns about gender and class, national identity, race and empire and religious authority. Vegetarianism embodied the Victorians' complicated response to modernity. While some vegetarians were averse to features of the industrial and urban world, other vegetarian entrepreneurs embraced technology in the creation of substitute foods and other commodities. Hostile, like the associated anti-vivisectionists and anti-vaccinationists, to a new 'priesthood' of scientists, vegetarians defended themselves through the new sciences of nutrition and chemistry. 'Of Victorians and Vegetarians' uncovers who the vegetarians were, how they attempted to convert their fellow Britons (and the world beyond) to their 'bloodless diet' and the response of contemporaries in a variety of media and genres. Through a close study of the vegetarian periodicals and organisational archives, extensive biographical research and a broader examination of texts relating to food, dietary reform and allied reform movements, James Gregory provides us with the first fascinating foray into the impact of vegetarianism on the Victorians. In doing so he gives revealing insights into the development of animal welfare, other contemporary reform movements and the histories of food and diet.
"Theophile Gautier a envoye avec un feuilleton plus de trois mille personnes dans latelier de M. Ingres, wrote Champfleury in 1848. For artists, critics and readers alike, Gautier was the essential figure in French art journalism in the mid-nineteenth century. During the short-lived but pivotal period of the Second Republic, when the new administration was committed to reforming all the institutions of the fine arts, Gautier deployed the full resources of his brilliant, flexible and authoritative writing to support and direct these developments in ways compatible with his commitment to an idealist aesthetic, itself under growing pressure from alternative trends in an increasingly competitive art market. This first study of all Gautiers art journalism written during the Second Republic provides a long overdue reassessment of Gautiers importance in French nineteenth-century visual culture."
In 1850, a baby hippopotamus arrived in England, thought to be the first in Europe since the Roman Empire, and almost certainly the first in Britain since prehistoric times. Captured near an island in the White Nile, Obaysch was donated by the viceroy of Egypt in exchange for greyhounds and deerhounds. His arrival in London was greeted with a wave of ‘hippomania’, doubling the number of visitors to the Zoological Gardens almost overnight. Delving into the circumstances of Obaysch’s capture and exhibition, John Simons investigates the phenomenon of ‘star’ animals in Victorian Britain against the backdrop of an expanding British Empire. He shows how the entangled aims of scientific exploration, commercial ambition, and imperial expansion shaped the treatment of exotic animals throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Along the way, he uncovers the strange and moving stories of Obaysch and the other hippos who joined him in Europe as the trade in zoo animals grew.
Everyone has a personal connection to the past, independent of historical inquiry. So, what is the role of the historian? Making History argues that historians have damagingly dissociated the discipline of history from the everyday nature of history, defining their work only in scholarly terms. Exploring the relationship between history and society, Kalela makes the case for a more participatory historical research culture, in which historians take account of their role in society and the ways in which history-making as a basic social practice is present in their work. Making History not only asks provocative questions about the role of the historian, it also provides practical guidance for students and historians on planning research projects with greater public impact. This book is vital reading for all historians, lay and professional, and will be an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on historiography and research methods.
This book presents an analysis of masculinity construction in a large corpus of women’s magazines, adopting a feminist Critical Stylistic approach to reveal how men are talked about and ‘sold’ to women as part of a successful performance of hegemonic femininity. This novel approach identifies women’s magazines as sites of ‘lad culture’ that perpetuate ideologies more commonly associated with the ‘laddism’ of male-targeted media. It examines how stereotypical images of men as naturally aggressive and obsessed with sex are promoted, as well as considering some of the ways in which women’s magazines contribute to the social construction of normative understandings of gender and sexuality more broadly. This engaging work will offer fresh insights to students and scholars of (Critical) Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Stylistics, and Gender and Communication Studies.
Nutritional knowledge between the lab and the field : the search for dietary norms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries / Elizabeth Neswald -- How vegetarians, naturopaths, scientists, and physicians unmade the protein standard in modern Germany / Corinna Treitel -- Of carnivores and conquerors : French nutritional debates in the Age of Empire, 1890-1914 / Deborah Neill -- Setting standards : the soldier's food in Germany, 1850-1960 / Ulrike Thoms -- The quest for a nutritional El Dorado : efforts to demonstrate dietary impacts on resistance to infectious disease in the 1920s and 1930s / David F. Smith -- Not a complete food for man? : the controversy about white versus wholemeal bread in interwar Britain / Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska -- Proscribing deception? : the Gould net weight amendment and the origins of mandatory nutrition labeling / Suzanne Junod -- When is a famine not a famine? Gauging Indian hunger in Imperial and Cold War contexts / Nick Cullather
