Thomas Hardy and animals

"Thomas Hardy and Animals examines the human and nonhuman animals who walk and crawl and fly across and around the pages of Hardy's novels. Animals abound in his writings, yet little scholarly attention has been paid to them so far. This book fills this gap in Hardy studies, bringing an important author within range of a new and developing area of critical inquiry. It considers the way Hardy's representations of animals challenged ideas of human-animal boundaries debated by the Victorian scientific and philosophical communities. In moments of encounter between humans and animals, Hardy questions boundaries based on ideas of moral sense or moral agency, language and reason, the possession of a face, and the capacity to suffer and perceive pain. Through an emphasis on embodied encounters, his writings call for an extension of empathy to others, human or nonhuman. In this accessible book Anna West offers a new approach to Hardy criticism"--

Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; Acknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter 1 What Does It Mean to Be a Creature?; Constructing Creature; Inanimate Creatures; Animal Creatures; Human Creatures; Chapter 2 "The Only Things We Believe in Are the Sheep and the Dogs"; Dogs: Moral Agency and Moral Sense in Animals; Sheep: Moral Responsibility to Animals; Chapter 3 "Artful" Creatures, Part I: Animal Language; Animal Language; Chapter 4 "Artful" Creatures, Part II: Can a Snake Have a Face?

Chapter 5 "Artful" Creatures, Part III: "Can They Suffer?"Chapter 6 Useful Creatures: Rethinking Hardy's Humanitarianism; "If All Had Their Rights"; "That Vivisection Question"; "Never Another Pet for Me!"; "Single Acts on a Small Scale"; Appendix; Bibliography; Texts by Thomas Hardy; Secondary Texts; Index.