The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

The Counterhuman Imaginary proposes that alongside the historical, social, and institutional structures of human reality that seem to be the sole subject of the literary text, an other-than-human world is everywhere in evidence. Laura Brown finds that within eighteenth-century British literature, the human cultural imaginary can be seen, equally, as a counterhuman imaginary—an alternative realm whose scope and terms exceed human understanding or order.

Through close readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, along with lapdog lyrics, circulation narratives that give agency to inanimate objects like coins and carriages, and poetry about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Brown traces the ways presence and power of the nonhuman—weather, natural disasters, animals, even the concept of love—not only influence human creativity, subjectivity, and history but are inseparable from them. Traversing literary theory, animal studies, new materialism, ecocriticism, and affect theory, The Counterhuman Imaginary offers an original repudiation of the centrality of the human to advance an integrative new methodology for reading chaos, fluidity, force, and impossibility in literary culture.

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The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

The Counterhuman Imaginary proposes that alongside the historical, social, and institutional structures of human reality that seem to be the sole subject of the literary text, an other-than-human world is everywhere in evidence. Laura Brown finds that within eighteenth-century British literature, the human cultural imaginary can be seen, equally, as a counterhuman imaginary—an alternative realm whose scope and terms exceed human understanding or order.

Through close readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, along with lapdog lyrics, circulation narratives that give agency to inanimate objects like coins and carriages, and poetry about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Brown traces the ways presence and power of the nonhuman—weather, natural disasters, animals, even the concept of love—not only influence human creativity, subjectivity, and history but are inseparable from them. Traversing literary theory, animal studies, new materialism, ecocriticism, and affect theory, The Counterhuman Imaginary offers an original repudiation of the centrality of the human to advance an integrative new methodology for reading chaos, fluidity, force, and impossibility in literary culture.

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The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

by Laura S. Brown
The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature
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The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature

by Laura S. Brown

Overview

The Counterhuman Imaginary proposes that alongside the historical, social, and institutional structures of human reality that seem to be the sole subject of the literary text, an other-than-human world is everywhere in evidence. Laura Brown finds that within eighteenth-century British literature, the human cultural imaginary can be seen, equally, as a counterhuman imaginary—an alternative realm whose scope and terms exceed human understanding or order.

Through close readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, along with lapdog lyrics, circulation narratives that give agency to inanimate objects like coins and carriages, and poetry about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Brown traces the ways presence and power of the nonhuman—weather, natural disasters, animals, even the concept of love—not only influence human creativity, subjectivity, and history but are inseparable from them. Traversing literary theory, animal studies, new materialism, ecocriticism, and affect theory, The Counterhuman Imaginary offers an original repudiation of the centrality of the human to advance an integrative new methodology for reading chaos, fluidity, force, and impossibility in literary culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501772566
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 11/15/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 162
File size: 20 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Laura Brown is the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of Fables of Modernity, Ends of Empire, Alexander Pope, English Dramatic Form, 1660–1750, and Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes.

What People are Saying About This

author of The Experimental Imagination Tita Chico

The Counterhuman Imaginary expertly draws upon critical conversations with affect theory, thing theory, and science studies to argue with great originality that eighteenth-century texts invested in materiality in its various forms are surprising barometers of the dynamic, unexpected, and disruptive effects of the nonhuman.

Felicity Nussbaum

Laura Brown's creative analysis urges us to re-think the affective connections between the human and nonhuman imaginary. Ranging widely across eighteenth-century literature, she radically unsettles human authority over the other-than-human. Readers will not be able to regard Defoe's earthenware pot or Pope's lapdogs or Swift's city shower in the same way after engaging with Brown's "new materialism" and the vitality of matter.

Sean Silver

The Counterhuman Imaginary illustrates the challenges that emerged when humans first encountered the inhuman scales of consumer capitalism, print culture, and urban disaster. Brown shows us how authors of the eighteenth century developed new strategies for thinking beyond the human—offering lessons as we tackle the most pressing issues of our own.

Tita Chico

The Counterhuman Imaginary expertly draws upon critical conversations with affect theory, thing theory, and science studies to argue with great originality that eighteenth-century texts invested in materiality in its various forms are surprising barometers of the dynamic, unexpected, and disruptive effects of the nonhuman.

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