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Animal Satire presents a cultural history of animal satire, a critically neglected but persistent presence in the history of cultural production, in which animals expose human folly while the strategies of satire expose the folly of human-animal relations. Highlighting the teeming animal presences across the history of satirical expression from Aristophanes to Twitter, with chapters on key works of literature, drama, film, and a plethora of satirical media, Animal Satire reveals the rich rhetorical significance of animality in powering the politics of satire from ancient and medieval through modern and contemporary times. More pressingly, the book makes the case for the significance of satire for understanding the real-world implications of rhetoric about animals in ongoing struggles for justice. By gathering both critical and creative examples from representative media forms, historical periods, and continents, this volume aims to enrich scholarship on the history of satire as well as empower creative practitioners with ideas about its practical applications today.
List of contents
A Satire by Way of a Preface.- 1 The Hall of the Sovereigns.- Introduction.- 2 Animal Satire: An Introduction.- Part I Drama and Poetry: Animal Satire in Classics, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies.- 3 Dogs in Court and Sheep in the Assembly: Animal Satire in Aristophanes.- 4 The "Battle of the Frogs and Mice" (Batrachomyomachia) and Satire in the Ancient Greco-Roman Tradition.- 5 Making an Ass of Yourself? The Pointed Comedy of the Mirror for Fools.- 6 What Can Beast Fables Do in Literary Animal Studies? Ben Jonson's Volpone and the Prehumanist Human.- 7 "That was a rare experiment of transfusing the blood of a sheep into a mad-man": Animal Experiments and Satirical Knowledge in Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso.- Satirical Interruption.- 8 A Slaves' Revolt.- Part II Satirical Editorials and Fiction: Early Through High Modernist Studies.- 9 "A green Parrot for a good Speaker": Writing with a Birds-Eye View in Eliza Haywood's The Parrot.-10 The Lacking Satirical Animals of Mary Shelley's The Last Man.- 11 Learning About Race and Religion with Bob and Felissa: Satire in Nineteenth-Century Children's It-Narratives.- 12 Nineteenth-Century American Anti-extinction Humour: "A Polar Whale's Appeal" as Environmentalist Animal Satire.- 13 Vivisections, Vaccinations, Revelations: Ecofeminist Satire and Biopolitical Dystopia in Frances Power Cobbe's The Age of Science.- 14 "Wolf within the Fold": Satire and Animality in The Brutalitarian and The Beagler Boy.- 15 Animals and Animality in Saki's Satirical Short Stories.- 16 Satire and Significant Otherness in Virginia Woolf's Flush: A Biography.- Satirical Interruption.- 17 How to Slaughter a Human.- Part III Animal Satire in Contemporary Literature, Film and Media Studies.- 18 "Thanks a lot, big brain": Satirical Misanthropy in Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos.- 19 "Dogs are supposed to be able to instinctively live with purpose": Brian, FamilyGuy, and the Inevitable Anthropocentrism of Satire.- 20 The Paradox of the Charismatic Pig in The Simpsons Movie and Okja.- 21 [Sic] Beasts.- 22 The Satirical Rhetorics of [Re]Tweeting Birds.- A Satire by Way of Conclusion.- 23 The Need for Giant Ape Protection: A Petition to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.- A Grab-bag of Animal Satires.- 24 A Grab-bag of Animal Satires.
About the author
Robert McKay is Professor of Contemporary Literature, School of English, University of Sheffield, UK. He has co-edited
Animal Remains (2022),
Against Value in the Arts and Education (2016), and
Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic (2017). He is the co-author (with the Animal Studies Group) of
Killing Animals (2006).
Susan McHugh is Professor of English, School of Arts and Humanities, University of New England, USA. She is the author of Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-animal Stories against Extinction and Genocide (2019), Animal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines (2011), and Dog (2004). She is co-editor of several volumes, including Posthumanism in Art and Science (2021) and Indigenous Creatures, Native Knowledges, and the Arts: Animal Studies in Modern Worlds (Palgrave 2017).
Robert McKay and Susan McHugh are co-editors (with John Miller) of the Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature book series, as well as the volume The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (Palgrave 2021).
