Animal Presence and Human Identity in Modern Literature - (Dis)figurations of Humanimality from Shakespeare to Desai

Animal Presence and Human Identity in Modern Literature is an exploration of literary representations of the human-animal encounter in modernity that press human "being" to its limits. Texts studied include Shakespeare's King Lear, Eliot's Middlemarch, Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atwood's Surfacing, and Desai's Clear Light of Day.