Representing Animals in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: natural history, narrative sympathy, and animal and human rights

本研究调查了1760- 1800年英国文学中非人类动物的表现，这是一个人们对自己与动物关系的理解发生重大变化的时期。早期动物形象中普遍存在的神话元素被广泛物种的自然主义描述所取代，这些描述结合了最近探险家的发现和吉尔伯特·怀特（Gilbert White）等观察者在当地进行的密切研究。养宠物广泛传播，宠物在英语写作中也占有广泛的地位，从威廉·考伯关于他的野兔的诗歌到迅速发展的教育文献中所描绘的猫、狗和小鸟。人们在布道、诗歌和小说中表达了对狩猎、动物诱饵和对待马车马的残忍行为的反对，并呼吁制定保护性立法，这些立法在接下来的一个世纪里结出了硕果。该项目认为，苏格兰启蒙运动哲学家大卫·休谟和亚当·斯密的作品中出现的同情观念，在鼓励和使这些发展背后的人类与动物之间日益增长的友谊意识的表达成为可能方面发挥了重要作用。它旨在展示在科学调查和自然主义观察的基础上，结合对动物体验的移情态度，在这一时期出现的一种新的动物性建构。动物形象的变化将被置于这一时期其他重大发展的背景下，特别是自然权利话语的增长。反奴隶制运动和启蒙运动女权主义的工作与倡导善待动物重叠，许多人参与了不止一项运动。然而，那些主张奴隶或妇女权利的人不得不反驳这样一种观点，即这些群体的成员太接近动物本性，不能被赋予完全理性的人的地位。通过分析动物问题在反奴隶制和女权主义写作中产生的紧张关系，该项目旨在更全面地了解人权的历史及其与动物权利概念的复杂关系。该项目分为四个部分。它将在一系列相关的文章中发布，探索与不同写作领域相关的一般问题。1)同情与教育叙事。文学史学家已经建立了同情哲学和感伤叙事技巧之间的联系，叙事学家已经将小说中人物思想的表现理论化，但这些见解还没有应用到动物叙事中。本系列将调查包括安娜·莱蒂西亚·巴鲍德、莎拉·特里默、托马斯·戴、多萝西·基尔纳和爱德华·奥古斯都·肯德尔在内的教育作家的动物作品，认为他们开发了创新的叙事技巧，使读者对动物角色产生共鸣。2)动物与启蒙女性主义。这个系列集中在凯瑟琳·麦考利、玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特和玛丽·海斯的作品上，研究了女性与动物之间的相似之处对启蒙运动女权主义的影响，这些动物通常被认为是比男人更没有理性的生物。3)博物写作和动物的表现。着眼于法国博物学家布丰的英译本，英国博物学家怀特和托马斯·彭南特的作品，以及儿童的自然历史，本系列将研究自然历史话语对理解人与动物关系和同情动物的影响。4)反奴隶制话语和动物写作。本系列分析了反对奴隶制和反对虐待动物运动之间的交叉和紧张关系，重点关注奥拉达·伊奎亚诺、托马斯·戴、汉娜·莫尔、威廉·考伯、安娜·莱蒂西亚·巴鲍尔德、关于奴隶贸易的小册子和议会辩论。这项研究是启蒙运动时期动物长期研究项目的第一阶段。

This research investigates the representation of non-human animals in British literature in 1760--1800, a time when people's understanding of their relationship to animals significantly changed. The mythical element pervading earlier animal representation was replaced by naturalistic accounts of a wide range of species, incorporating recent explorers' discoveries and the close local studies made by observers such as Gilbert White. Pet-keeping spread widely, and pets figured extensively in English writing, from William Cowper's poems on his hares to the cats, dogs, and small birds portrayed in a rapidly-growing educational literature. Opposition to the cruelties involved in hunting, animal--baiting, and the treatment of coach-horses was expressed in sermons, poetry and fiction, feeding into calls for protective legislation which were to bear fruit in the following century. The project contends that the idea of sympathy emerging from the work of Scottish Enlightenment philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith played an important part in encouraging and making possible the articulation of the growing sense of human fellowship with animals that lay behind these developments. It aims to demonstrate the emergence of a new construction of animal nature in this period, based on scientific investigation and naturalist observation and incorporating an empathetic attitude to animal experience.Changing representation of animals will be set in the context of other significant developments in the period, in particular the growth of natural rights discourse. The anti-slavery campaign and the work of Enlightenment feminism overlapped with advocacy of kindness to animals, a number of people acting in more than one of these movements. However, those advocating rights for slaves or women had to counter the view that members of these groups were too close to animal nature to be accorded the status of fully rational human beings. Analysing the tensions produced in anti-slavery and feminist writing by the question of animals, the project aims towards a fuller understanding of the history of human rights and its complex relationship with the notion of rights for animals.The project is divided into four strands. It will issue in a linked series of articles, exploring its general questions in relation to distinct areas of writing.1) Sympathy and educational narrative. Literary historians have established links between the philosophy of sympathy and sentimental narrative techniques, and narratologists have theorised the representation of characters' minds in, but these insights have not yet been applied to animal narratives. This strand will investigate animals in educational writers including Anna Letitia Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer, Thomas Day, Dorothy Kilner, and Edward Augustus Kendall, arguing that they develop innovative narrative techniques for creating reader empathy with animal characters.2) Animals and Enlightenment feminism. This strand focuses on the work of Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Hays, examining the implications for Enlightenment feminism of the parallels commonly drawn between women and animals as creatures of lesser reason than man.3) Natural history writing and the representation of animals. Focusing on English translations of the French naturalist Buffon,on the work of English naturalists White and Thomas Pennant, and on natural histories for children, this strand will examine the effects of the discourse of natural history on the understanding of human-animal relations and on sympathy for animals.4) Anti-slavery discourse and animal writing. This strand analyses intersections and tensions between campaigns against slavery and against cruelty to animals, focusing on Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Day, Hannah More, William Cowper, Anna Letitia Barbauld, pamphlets on the slave-trade, and parliamentary debates.This research forms the first stage of a long term project on animals in the Enlightenment.