Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

British Romanticism and Animals

2008; Wiley; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00597.x

1741-4113

Christine Kenyon Jones,

Moravian Church and William Blake

Abstract This paper reflects on representations of animals within the context of ‘Nature’ in the written culture of Romantic‐period Britain, focusing on William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, with some discussion of the work of William Blake, Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, John Clare and Jeremy Bentham. Also explored are some non‐literary discussions about animals in this period: in particular the debates in the British Parliament between 1800 and 1809 on bull‐baiting and on the prevention of cruelty to animals. The questions raised and the values espoused by Romantic art are related to twenty‐first‐century environmentalism and to other ethical questions concerning the relationship between human and non‐human animals.