000			04239cam a22005654a 4500
001			muse51327
003			MdBmJHUP
005			20210127151139.0
006			m o d
007			cr||||||||nn|n
008			160111s2016 miu o 00 0 eng d
010			_z 2015041734
020			_a9780472121557
020			_a0472121553
020			_z9780472072958 (hardback : acid-free paper)
020			_z9780472052950 (cloth : alk. paper)
020			_z0472072951
035			_a(OCoLC)1049855374
040			_aMdBmJHUP _cMdBmJHUP
043			_ae-uk---
050	0	4	_aPR438.P48 _bC86 2016
082	0		_a820.9/36 _223
100	1		_aCole, Lucinda, _eauthor.
245	1	0	_aImperfect Creatures _bVermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1740 / _cLucinda Cole.
264		1	_bUniversity of Michigan Press,
264		3	_bProject MUSE,
300			_a1 online resource (vi, 240 pages) : _billustrations ;
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 211-232) and index.
505	0		_aIntroduction: Reading beneath the Grain -- Rats, Witches, Miasma, and Early Modern Theories of Contagion -- Swarming Things: Dearth and the Plagues of Egypt in Wither and Cowley -- "Observe the Frog": Imperfect Creatures, Neuroanatomy, and the Problem of the Human -- Libertine Biopolitics: Dogs, Bitches, and Parasites in Shadwell, Rochester, and Gay -- What Happened to the Rats? Hoarding, Hunger, and Storage on Crusoe's Island -- Afterword: We Have Never Been Perfect.
506	0		_aOpen Access _fUnrestricted online access _2star
520			_a"Lucinda Cole's Imperfect Creatures offers the first full-length study of the shifting, unstable, but foundational status of "vermin" as creatures and category in the early modern literary, scientific, and political imagination. In the space between theology and an emergent empiricism, Cole's argument engages a wide historical swath of canonical early modern literary texts--William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, Abraham Cowley's The Plagues of Egypt, Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso, Rochester's "A Ramble in St. James's Park," and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Journal of the Plague Year--alongside other nonliterary primary sources and under-examined archival materials from the period, including treatises on animal trials, grain shortages, rabies, and comparative neuroanatomy. As Cole illustrates, human health and demographic problems--notably those of feeding populations periodically stricken by hunger, disease, and famine--were tied to larger questions about food supplies, property laws, national identity, and the theological imperatives that underwrote humankind's claim to dominion over the animal kingdom. In this context, Cole's study indicates, so-called "vermin" occupied liminal spaces between subject and object, nature and animal, animal and the devil, the devil and disease--even reason and madness. This verminous discourse formed a foundational category used to carve out humankind's relationship to an unpredictable, a-rational natural world, but it evolved into a form for thinking about not merely animals but anything that threatened the health of the body politic--humans, animals, and even thoughts. "-- _cProvided by publisher.
588			_aDescription based on print version record.
650		0	_aLITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance. _2bisacsh
650		0	_aNATURE / Animals / General. _2bisacsh
650		0	_aLiterature and science _zEngland _xHistory _y17th century.
650		0	_aAnimals as carriers of disease.
650		0	_aHuman-animal relationships.
650		0	_aHuman-animal relationships in literature.
650		0	_aPests in literature.
650		0	_aEnglish literature _y18th century _xHistory and criticism.
650		0	_aEnglish literature _y17th century _xHistory and criticism.
655		7	_aElectronic books. _2local
710	2		_aProject Muse. _edistributor
830		0	_aBook collections on Project MUSE.
856	4	0	_zFull text available: _uhttps://muse.jhu.edu/book/52100/
999			_c24787 _d24787