Seminar Literary Animal Studies John Clare to Will Self Di 14.30-16.00

In the history of ideas, the relationship between the human and the animal has long been fraught with ambivalence. On the one hand, humans are often regarded as one kind of animals among others, but on the other hand, they are also generally seen as exceptional: as the only animals that are capable of emancipating themselves from, and defining their life as superior to, the world of beastly existence. In fact, the very word animal' can either be used to include or to exclude the human. Thus, since Aesop's fables, literature has frequently made reference to animals in order to represent the human condition as a mode of being that is both deeply familiar and strange enough to be in need of (moral) elucidation. In this course, we will start from the assumption that one has to pay attention to the animal in order to come up with answers to the question of what it means to be human. We will therefore read a variety of poetic and prose works from the Romantic period to the twentieth century that, more or less prominently, investigate or make use of non-human animals, whether for allegorical, zoological, philosophical, satirical or other purposes. Texts to be studied will include poems by John Clare and Lord Tennyson, short tales and poems by D.H. Lawrence, novels by Thomas Hardy and Will Self as well as, time permitting, theoretical pieces by Donna Haraway and Martha Nussbaum. Longer set texts (to be discussed in this order): Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Ed. Suzanne Falck-Yi. Oxford: OUP, 2002. ISBN-10: 0199537011.   Will Self. Great Apes (1997). London: Bloomsbury, 2011. ISBN-10: 1408827409.   Please buy your own copies of these novels and start reading sooner rather than later! It is advisable to take notes during the reading process. Other material will be made available electronically.   Suggested introductory reading: Harriet Ritvo. -On the Animal Turn-. Daedalus 136.4 (2007), 118-122.       Englisch (MA, PO 2013) Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Dr. Erchinger Philipp