Novel Creatures: Animal Life and the New Millennium [Hardcover]

Novel Creatures takes a close look at the expanding interest in animals in modern times and argues that the novels of this period reveal a dramatic shift in conceptions of creatureliness. Scholars have turned to the term creaturely recently to describe shared aspects of human and animal experience, thus moving beyond work that primarily attends to distinctions between the human and the animal. Carrying forward this recent scholarship, Novel Creatures argues that creatureliness has been an intensely millennial preoccupation, but in two contrasting formsone leading up to the turn of the millennium, and the other appearing after the tragic events of 9/11.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Shared Catastrophe and the Call of the Creaturely

1 Trials by Water: Aquatic Landscapes, Questionable Sacrifices in Yann Martel and Linda Hogan

2 Ringing in Animals and Eras: At the Circus with Sara Gruen and Angela Carter

3 From Farm to Fable: Harvesting Humans in J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Michel Faber

4 Dwelling in the Future: Human-Animal Apocalypses in Indra Sinha and Barbara Gowdy

Coda: Tania Jamess Millennial Elephant

Works Cited

Index

Novel Creatures takes a close look at the expanding interest in animals in modern fiction and argues that the novels of this time reveal a dramatic shift in conceptions of creatureliness. Scholars have turned to the term creaturely recently to describe shared aspects of human and animal experience, thus moving beyond work that primarily attends to distinctions between the human and the animal. Carrying forward this recent scholarship,&lƒt