Creature Discomfort: Fauna-criticism, Ethics and the Representation of Animals in Spanish American Fiction and Poetry(4 Critical Animal Studies)

In Creature Discomfort: Fauna-criticism, Ethics, and the Representation of Animals in Spanish American Fiction and Poetry, Scott M. DeVries uncovers a tradition in Spanish American literature where animal-ethical representations anticipate many of the most pressing concerns from present debates in animal studies. The author documents moments from the corpus that articulate long-standing positions such as a defense of animal rights or advocacy for liberationism, that engage in literary philosophical meditations concerning mind theory and animal sentience, and that anticipate current ideas from Critical Animal Studies including the rejection of hierarchical differentiations between the categories human and nonhuman. Creature Discomfort innovates the notion of “fauna-criticism” as a new literary approach within animal studies; this kind of analysis emphasizes the reframing of literary history to expound animal ethical positions from literary texts, both those that have been considered canonical as well as those that have long been neglected. In this study, DeVries employs fauna-criticism to examine nonhuman sentience, animal interiority, and other ethical issues such as the livestock and pet industries, circuses, zoos, hunting, and species extinction in fictional narrative and poetry from the nineteenth century, modernista, Regional, indigenista, and contemporary periods of Spanish American literature.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Chapter One: Introduction Part One Sentience, Consciousness, Identity Chapter Two: Horse, Ape, Mosquito: Animal Perspectives in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Texts Chapter Three: The Beasts of Ecological Narrative: Intelligent Animals in the Environmental Novels of Luis Sepúlveda Part Two Gone to the Swans: Modernismo and Poetry Chapter Four: Swan Songs: The Animal as Muse, Symbol, and Object of Spanish American Modernismo Chapter Five: Caged Verse: Animals in Poetry Part Three Regional Literature, Indigenismo, Recent Fiction Chapter Six: Meat: Regional Livestock Literature Chapter Seven: Harness, Harpoon, and Cage: Horses, Whaling, and Animal Entertainment in Regional Literature Chapter Eight: Tribal Creatures: Animals and Indigenista Literature Chapter Nine: A Dog and Hippo Show: Animals in Recent Fiction Chapter Ten: Conclusions Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Scott M. DeVries, Ph. D (2003), Rutgers University, is Professor of Spanish at Bethel College, Indiana. He has published monographs, articles, and book chapters on Spanish American ecology, energy, and literature including A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature (Bucknell University Press, 2013).