Novel Creatures takes a close look at the expanding interest in animals in modern times and argues that the novels of this period reveal a dramatic shift in conceptions of "creatureliness." Scholars have turned to the term "creaturely" recently to describe shared aspects of human and animal experience, thus moving beyond work that primarily attends to distinctions between the human and the animal. Carrying forward this recent scholarship, Novel Creatures argues that creatureliness has been an intensely millennial preoccupation, but in two contrasting formsone leading up to the turn of the millennium, and the other appearing after the tragic events of 9/11.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Shared Catastrophe and the Call of the Creaturely
1 Trials by Water: Aquatic Landscapes, Questionable Sacrifices in Yann Martel
and Linda Hogan
2 Ringing in Animals and Eras: At the Circus with Sara Gruen and Angela
Carter
3 From Farm to Fable: Harvesting Humans in J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, and
Michel Faber
4 Dwelling in the Future: Human-Animal Apocalypses in Indra Sinha and Barbara
Gowdy
Coda: Tania Jamess Millennial Elephant
Works Cited
Index
Hilary Thompson is Assistant Professor of English at Bowdoin College, USA. She teaches and publishes on contemporary literature, particularly on questions of the animal and globalization. Her work appears most recently in the volumes The City Since 9/11: Literature, Film, Television and Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature.
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