Abstract
This chapter introduces biographical research within historical, cultural and literary studies as an approach to recovering the individuality of animals. As a genre, biography depends as much on disciplinary and cultural contexts and the willingness to subscribe agency to the biographical subject as on the willingness to accept the constructedness of narratives. The chapter sketches out prior attempts to create animal biographies of individuals as well as groups of animals and presents new theoretical perspectives that promise to be fruitful in generating a view of animals as agents while at the same time problematizing the representational form of the biography. As such, the writing of animal biographies comes into view as an interdisciplinary effort that re-writes animal lives through their shared relationships with humans.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Baratay, Biographies animales; DeMello, Speaking; McHugh, Animal Stories; Kean, “Balto”; Pycior, “First Dog”; Witz, “Making”; Fudge, “Animal Lives.”
- 2.
Winkes, “Boukephalas.”
- 3.
Kean, “Exploration.”
- 4.
Bingley , Animal Biography (first published in 1802 in 3 volumes, noteworthy as: Animal Biography; or, Authentic Anecdotes of the Lives, Manners and Economy of the Animal Creation, Arranged According to the System of Linnaeus).
- 5.
Zymner, “Biographie.”
- 6.
White, Tropics.
- 7.
Ferres, “Gender.”
- 8.
See, for example, Gradmann, “Geschichte.”
- 9.
For an overview see Hamilton, Biography.
- 10.
See also Baratay, Biographies animales, 13–20.
- 11.
Klein and Schnicke, “20. Jahrhundert,” 264.
- 12.
Bourdieu, “L’illusion biographique.”
- 13.
Pycior, “Public and Private,” 177–178.
- 14.
See, for example, Hornung, “Anthropology.”
- 15.
Schnicke, “Begriffsgeschichte.”
- 16.
See, for example, Booth, How to Make it.
- 17.
Davies and Gannon, “Collective Biography.”
- 18.
Fudge, “Animal Lives.”
- 19.
DeMello, “Introduction.”
- 20.
Cf. Klein and Schnicke, “20. Jahrhundert,” 259.
- 21.
On the last point, see, for example, the discussion of anthropocentrism in Prade, Sprachoffenheit, 35–43.
- 22.
Woolf, “Art of Biography,” 226–227.
- 23.
Woolf, Flush.
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Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (2018). Introduction: Biographies, Animals and Individuality. In: Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (eds) Animal Biography. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_1
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