Beastly Natures by Dorothee Brantz - 9780813946429

Beastly NaturesAnimals, Humans, and the Study of History\nAuthor(s): Dorothee Brantz\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Virginia Press, United States\nImprint: University of Virginia Press\nISBN-13: 9780813946429, 978-0813946429\nSynopsis\nAlthough the animal may be, as Nietzsche argued, ahistorical, living completely in the present, it nonetheless plays a crucial role in human history. The fascination with animals that leads not only to a desire to observe and even live alongside them, but to capture or kill them, is found in all civilizations. The essays collected in Beastly Natures show how animals have been brought into human culture, literally helping to build our societies (as domesticated animals have done) or contributing, often in problematic ways, to our concept of the wild. The book begins with a group of essays that approach the historical relevance of human-animal relations seen from the perspectives of various disciplines and suggest ways in which animals migy