What Are the Animals to Us?: Approaches from Science, Religion, Folklore, Literature, And Art

by Aftandilian, David; Copeland, Marion W.; Wilson, David Scofield

• ISBN13: 9781572334724
• ISBN10: 157233472X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-30
• Publisher: Univ of Tennessee Pr

Summary

From the first woolly mammoths painted in exquisite detail on Paleolithic cave walls to contemporary depictions of anthropomorphized mice as heroes of animated films and fiction, animals have played crucial roles in human cultures around the world. In What Are the Animals to Us? scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines explore the diverse meanings of animals in science, religion, folklore, literature, and art. The contributors focus especially on analyzing cultural products about animals. The chapters in the first section of the book, "From Totems to Tales," interpret folklore of cats, foxes, snakes, and frogs in various cultures, while the chapters in thesection on "Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens" concern themselves with literary and historical representations of reindeer, wild birds, tigers, and other animals. The chapters in "Holy Dogs and Scared Bunnies" consider the roles of animals in art and religion. In the section on "Ethics, Ethology, and Konrad Lorenz," the contributors evaluate the legacy of this cofounder of the science of animal behavior in the light of recent revelations about Lorenz's National Socialist past. Finally, an extensive afterword offers theoretical and practical ways in which readers might better understand animal others in their own right, and discusses the ethical implications of such an understanding. Accessible and lively, What Are the Animals to Us? is a uniquely wide-ranging and well-written interdisciplinary introduction to the emerging field of animal studies that offers not just novel approaches to the study of what animals mean to people but also fresh insights into a broad range of topics, from environmental history to animal behavior, postmodern art to Christian theology.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Of Bats, Animal Studies, and Real Animals	xi
Dave Aftandilian
Part 1 From Totems to Tales: Folklore, Myth, and Animals
Introduction	1
Boria Sax
1. The Waving Ones: Cats, Folklore, and the Experiential Source Hypothesis	5
Lynne S. McNeill
2. Spirits, Sex, and Wealth: Fox Lore and Fox Worship in Late Imperial China	21
Xiaofei Kang
3. Serpentine Mates in Japanese Folklore	37
Ria Koopmans–de Bruijn
4. Frogs, Snakes, and Agricultural Fertility: Interpreting Illinois Mississippian Representations	53
Dave Aftandilian
Part 2 Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Animals in Literature and History
Introduction	89
Marion W. Copeland
5. The Nature and Culture of Species: Eighteenth-Century and Contemporary Views	95
E.J.W. Hinds
6. Wild Animals in a Free Man's World? North American References in Norwegian Sportsmen's Descriptions of Reindeer, 1850-1950	111
Elisabet Sveingar Amundsen
7. Wild Birds in Aquilino Ribeiro's Writings: Using Literature as a Source for Environmental History	141
Ana Isabel Queiroz and Maria Teresa L.M.B. Andresen
8. The Triumphant Tiger: Short Narratives by Jorge Luis Borges	161
Susan Braden
9. Dark Brothers and Shadow Souls: Ursula K. Le Guin's Animal "Fables"	169
Tonia L. Payne
Part 3 Holy Dogs and Scared Bunnies: Animals in Art and Religion
Introduction	183
Laura Hobgood-Oster
10. Holy Dogs and Asses: Stories Told through Animal Saints	189
Laura Hobgood-Oster
11. Paw Prints on Preaching: The Healing Power of Biblical Stories about Animals	205
Rev. Susan Carole Roy
12. Personification of Pets: The Evolution of Canine Cartoons in the New Yorker	219
Anne Alden
13. Snakes and Bunnies: The Postmodern Animal in the Art of Ray Johnson	241
Muffet Jones
Part 4 Come into Animal Presence: Ethics, Ethology, and Konrad Lorenz
Introduction	259
David Scofield Wilson
14. Konrad Lorenz and the Mythology of Science	269
Boria Sax
15. The Ethical and Responsible Conduct of Science and the Question of Political Ideology: Konrad Lorenz in the Field of Ethology	277
Lynette A. Hart
16. Lorenz and Reduction	297
Bruce Hackett
Afterword: Toward a Unity with Nature	303
Dave Aftandilian and David Scofield Wilson
Contributors	327
Index	331