 | Polymorphous Domesticities: Pets, Bodies, and Desire in Four Modern Writers Subjects: Animals in literature; Wharton Edith 1862–1937 -- Criticism and interpretation; Barnes Djuna -- Criticism and interpretation; Colette 1873–1954 -- Criticism and interpretation; Ackerley J. R. (Joe Randolph) 1896–1967 -- Criticism and interpretation; ; Polymorphous Domesticities maps out the play of gender, sexuality, and alternative forms of domesticity in the works of four modern European and American writers--Edith Wharton, Djuna Barnes, Colette, and J. R. Ackerley. What these four writers have in common is a defiance of patriarchal paradigms in their lives as well as in their works. Not only did they live outside the norms of the heterosexual family unit, they also pursued and wrote about alternative lifestyles that prominently involved animals. Through close readings from a feminist perspective, Juliana Schiesari reconfigures the ways in which interspecies relationships inflect domestic spheres, reading the "Other" through the lens of gender, home, and family. As she explores how domestic life is refigured by the presence of animals, Schiesari challenges anthropocentric frames of reference and brings the very definition of "human" into question. Schiesari Juliana : Juliana Schiesari , Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, is the author most recently of Beasts and Beauties: Animals, Gender, and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance. |
