The Semiotics of Animal Representations.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (376 pages)
- Nature, Culture and Literature Series ; v.10 .
- Nature, Culture and Literature Series .
Intro -- THE SEMIOTICS OF ANIMAL REPRESENTATIONS -- Table of contents -- The semiotics of animal representations Introduction -- PART I FROM SHEPHERDING TO COLONISATION -- The zoosemiotics of sheep herding with dogs -- Avian aesthetics: The representation of bird song from music to science -- Speaking marmots, deaf hunters: Animal−human semiotic breakdown as the imagined cause of the Manchurian pneumonic plague of 1910-11 -- PART II FROM ILLUSTRATION TO SHOW -- Entomological rhetoric and the fabrication of the insect world -- Back on the menu": Humans, insectoid aliens, and the creation of ecophobia in science fiction -- Attenborough's natural history films: The evolutionar epic -- PART III FROM LIFE WRITING TO NATURE WRITING -- Communicating with the cow: Human−animal interaction in written narratives -- The representation of sheep in modern Japanese literature from Natsume Sōseki to Murakami Haruki -- Animal representation in the Harry Poter series -- Like a fish out of water: Literary representations of fish -- PART IV FROM MIND TO VALUE -- Thought without concepts in Angels and Insects: A.S. Byatt as srypto-biosemiotician -- A Peircean semiotic model for describing the anti-Oedipal structure of "humanimal" selves -- The (proto-)ethical significance of semiosis: When and how does one become somebody who matters? -- List of contributors -- Index.
The ways in which we represent animals say much about who we are, who we strive to be, and our often conflicting ideas about our relationships with nonhuman species. Whether the animal is seen as someone with whom we can relate and feel kinship or conceived of as the radical other, popular cultural descriptions of animals are often - if not always - indirect descriptions of ourselves. The contributions to this volume offer a unique panorama of academic and literary approaches, demonstrating that an analysis of cultural representations and constructions of animals is indispensable for a better understanding of the interface of human culture and the so-called animal world.