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List of contents
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Humans, Cephalopods, and History
Part I: The Era of New Ideas and Far-Reaching Seafaring, 1763-1802
1. The Late Eighteenth-Century Encounters with Giant-Sized Squid
2. Narratives and Enlightenment Theories
Part II: The Years of Uncertainty and Discovery, 1802-61
3. The Early Nineteenth-Century Encounters with Giant-sized Squid
4. The Enormous Squid, Zoology, and the Public Discussion
Part III: The Period of Cephalopod Monsters, 1861-99
5. The Late Nineteenth-Century Encounters with Giant-sized Squid
6. The Enormous Squid in Scientific and Public Discussion in the 1860s
7. The Emergence of the Giant Squid and how it Became a Monster
Conclusion
Index
About the author
Otto Latva is a historian focusing on human-animal and human-plant studies as well as environmental history. He has studied widely the early modern as well as the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century societies and cultures. In his previous studies, Latva has especially investigated the shared history of humans and animals and the long-term understanding of the marine environment. He is currently working as a university lecturer in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. He also leads a research project Disappeared, Endangered and Newly Arrived Species: The Human Relationship with the Changing Biodiversity of the Baltic Sea (HumBio), funded by the Academy of Finland.
Summary
Drawing on a range of sources, this book explores the historical relationship between sea animals and humans, demonstrating that far from being an age-old fear with its origins among seafarers, the conception of the giant squid as deep-sea monster evolved as a product of Enlightenment thinking in the work of zoologists and popular writers.
