Title Imperial beast fables : animals, cosmopolitanism, and the British Empire / Kaori Nagai

Published Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 252 pages) Series Palgrave studies in animals and literature Palgrave studies in animals and literature. Contents Introduction: Rats in the Box -- Chapter 1: Winged Tales: The Advent of the Imperial Beast Fable -- Chapter 2: 'Once Upon a Time When Animals Spoke: Theories of the Beast Fable -- Chapter 3: Into the Chinese Boxes: The Jungle Books -- Chapter 4: Kangaroo Notebook: Abes Metatherian Journey -- Chapter 5: Animal Alphabets: Chestertons Dog, Brownings Rats, Lears Blue Baboon -- Chapter 6: Fabling Cosmopolitanism: The Ark Esperanto Summary This book coins the term 'imperial beast fable to explore modern forms of human-animal relationships and their origins in the British Empire. Taking as a starting point the long nineteenth-century fascination with non-European beast fables, it examines literary reworkings of these fables, such as Rudyard Kiplings Jungle Books, in relation to the global politics of race, language, and species. The imperial beast fable figures variably as a key site where the nature and origins of mankind are hotly debated; an emerging space of conservation in which humans enclose animals to manage and control them; a cage in which an animal narrator talks to change its human jailors; and a vision of animal cosmopolitanism, in which a close kinship between humans and other animals is dreamt of. Written at the intersection of animal studies and postcolonial studies, this book proposes that the beast fable embodies the ideologies and values of the British Empire, while also covertly critiquing them. It therefore finds in the beast fable the possibility that the multitudinous animals it gives voice to might challenge the imperial networks which threaten their existence, both in the nineteenth century and today Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 20, 2020) Subject Fables -- History and criticism Animals in literature. Human-animal relationships in literature. Imperialism in literature. Cosmopolitanism. English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism Animals in literature Cosmopolitanism English literature Fables Human-animal relationships in literature Imperialism in literature Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9783030514938 3030514935

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