AustLit

'David Brooks's Animal Dreams collects a range of essays that draw on literary scholarship, critical theory, philosophy, history, and environmental sciences. While Brooks's writing is informed by a wide range of disciplines, the pieces presented here all ultimately circle back to a single topic: the relationships between humans and other animals. Brooks deftly works across this array of different scholarly lenses, and he manages to bring numerous diverse literary texts into his writing, while continually revisiting some interrelated questions. For instance, how are nonhuman animals presented in literature? What does their (often obfuscated) place in art reveal about human attitudes toward other species? How can animal-oriented or "animalist" readings of art show us deep epistemological and ethical conundrums that face us humans, both as individuals and on a societal level? As eaters, breeders, herders, killers, masters, companions, conservators, observers, and dominators of other species, what kind of obligations and responsibilities do we bear toward other animals—and toward others at large, even toward the very concept of "the Other"?' (Introduction)