Description
Book SynopsisEmpire and the Animal Body: Violence, Identity and Ecology in Victorian Adventure Fiction' explores representations of exotic animals in Victorian adventure fiction, mainly in works by R. M. Ballantyne, G. A. Henty, G. M. Fenn, Paul du Chaillu, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan. These primary texts are concerned with Southern and West Africa, India and what is now Indonesia in the period 18601910, an era which comprises imperial expansion, consolidation and the beginnings of imperial decline. Representations of exotic animals in such literary works generally revolve around portrayals of violence, either in big-game hunting or in the collection of scientific specimens, and draw on a range of literary sources, most notably romance, natural history writing and penny dreadful' fiction.
This study investigates how these texts' depictions of forms of violence complicate the seemingly fundamental distinction of humans from animals, and undermines the ideological structures of imperial
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‘[Miller] discusses the experience of the hunt as domination of the Other, big game as and economic resource, and the attempts to regulate the disappearance of endangered species, which often resulted in increased control over colonial subjects.’ —Adela Pinch, ‘Studies in English Literature’
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1: Otherness and Order; Chapter 2: Scientists and Specimens; Chapter 3: The Animal Within; Chapter 4: Wild Men and Wilderness; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index
