Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life 1600-1740 (University of Michigan Press, 2016)

Lucinda Cole

249 Pages

1 File ▾

Philosophy of Science,

Eighteenth-Century literature,

Animal Studies,

History of Science,

Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture

 ...more ▾

This is the full, published version of Imperfect Creatures, made available through the open access program Knowledge Unlatched. It contains chapters on George Wither, Abraham Cowley, Thomas Shadwell, John Wilmot, and Daniel Defoe, among others, read within the context of early modern science and ecology. Introduction Reading beneath the Grain Chapter 1. Rats, Witches, Miasma, and Early Modern Theories of Contagion Chapter 2. Swarming Things: Dearth and the Plagues of Egypt in Wither and Cowley Chapter 3. “Observe the Frog”: Imperfect Creatures, Neuroanatomy, and the Problem of the Human Chapter 4. Libertine Biopolitics: Dogs, Bitches, and Parasites in Shadwell, Rochester, and Gay Chapter 5. What Happened to the Rats? Hoarding, Hunger, and Storage on Crusoe’s Island Afterword We Have Never Been Perfect

https://www.academia.edu/26012810/Imperfect_Creatures_Vermin_Literature_and_the_Sciences_of_Life_1600_1740_University_of_Michigan_Press_2016_