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This monograph contends that attending to Pratchett's work could
help to save our world. It draws attention to the astonishing
capacity of Pratchett's novels to inspire and argues that
Pratchett's fantasy novels directly address many of the most
significant challenges people in the world face: the explosion of
weapons technology; the myriad issues involved in the envelopment
of human life by corporatized information technology; the
destructive human inattention to, and interactions with, the earth
and its life forms; and the problem of devalued labor.
Paradoxically, it is Pratchett's choice of fantasy that lets him
address the reality of major issues that humanity and the rest of
life confront now. Pratchett's novels show us how to better
understand and confront the problems the world is contending with.
The book will interest both scholars and fans.
This book explores how humans in the Renaissance lived with,
attended to, and considered the minds, feelings, and sociality of
other creatures. It examines how Renaissance literature and natural
history display an unequal creaturely world: all creatures were
categorized hierarchically. However, post-Cartesian readings of
Shakespeare and other Renaissance literature have misunderstood
Renaissance hierarchical creaturely relations, including human
relations. Using critical animal studies work and new materialist
theory, Bach argues that attending closely to creatures and objects
in texts by Shakespeare and other writers exposes this unequal
world and the use and abuse of creatures, including people. The
book also adds significantly to animal studies by showing how
central bird sociality and voices were to Renaissance human
culture, with many believing that birds were superior to some
humans in song, caregiving, and companionship. Bach shows how
Descartes, a central figure in the transition to modern ideas about
creatures, lived isolated from humans and other creatures and
denied ancient knowledge about other creatures' minds, especially
bird minds. As significantly, Bach shows how and why Descartes'
ideas appealed to human grandiosity. Asking how Renaissance
categorizations of creatures differ so much from modern
classifications, and why those modern classifications have shaped
so much animal studies work, this book offers significant new
readings of Shakespeare's and other Renaissance texts. It will
contribute to a range of fields, including Renaissance literature,
history, animal studies, new materialism, and the environmental
humanities.
This book explores how humans in the Renaissance lived with,
attended to, and considered the minds, feelings, and sociality of
other creatures. It examines how Renaissance literature and natural
history display an unequal creaturely world: all creatures were
categorized hierarchically. However, post-Cartesian readings of
Shakespeare and other Renaissance literature have misunderstood
Renaissance hierarchical creaturely relations, including human
relations. Using critical animal studies work and new materialist
theory, Bach argues that attending closely to creatures and objects
in texts by Shakespeare and other writers exposes this unequal
world and the use and abuse of creatures, including people. The
book also adds significantly to animal studies by showing how
central bird sociality and voices were to Renaissance human
culture, with many believing that birds were superior to some
humans in song, caregiving, and companionship. Bach shows how
Descartes, a central figure in the transition to modern ideas about
creatures, lived isolated from humans and other creatures and
denied ancient knowledge about other creatures' minds, especially
bird minds. As significantly, Bach shows how and why Descartes'
ideas appealed to human grandiosity. Asking how Renaissance
categorizations of creatures differ so much from modern
classifications, and why those modern classifications have shaped
so much animal studies work, this book offers significant new
readings of Shakespeare's and other Renaissance texts. It will
contribute to a range of fields, including Renaissance literature,
history, animal studies, new materialism, and the environmental
humanities.
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