The Counterhuman Imaginary proposes that alongside the historical,
social, and institutional structures of human reality that seem to
be the sole subject of the literary text, an other-than-human world
is everywhere in evidence. Laura Brown finds that within
eighteenth-century British literature, the human cultural imaginary
can be seen, equally, as a counterhuman imaginary—an alternative
realm whose scope and terms exceed human understanding or order.
Through close readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift,
and Alexander Pope, along with lapdog lyrics, circulation
narratives that give agency to inanimate objects like coins and
carriages, and poetry about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Brown
traces the ways presence and power of the nonhuman—weather,
natural disasters, animals, even the concept of love—not only
influence human creativity, subjectivity, and history but are
inseparable from them. Traversing literary theory, animal studies,
new materialism, ecocriticism, and affect theory, The Counterhuman
Imaginary offers an original repudiation of the centrality of the
human to advance an integrative new methodology for reading chaos,
fluidity, force, and impossibility in literary culture.
General
Imprint: |
Cornell University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
November 2023 |
Authors: |
Laura Brown
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
162 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-5017-7255-9 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-5017-7255-4 |
Barcode: |
9781501772559 |
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