- The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Animal Rights
- Animals in Political Theory
- Animals as Living Property
- The Human-Animal Bond
- Animal Sheltering
- Roaming Dogs
- Misothery: Contempt for Animals and Nature, Its Origins, Purposes, and Repercussions
- Continental Approaches to Animals and Animality
- Animals as Legal Subjects
- The Struggle for Compassion and Justice through Critical Animal Studies
- Interspecies Dialogue and Animal Ethics: The Feminist Care Perspective
- Cetacean Cognition
- History and Animal Agencies
- What Was It Like to Be a Cow?: History and Animal Studies
- Animals as Sentient Commodities
- Animal Work
- Animals as Reflexive Thinkers: The Aponoian Paradigm
- The Ethics of Animal Research: Theory and Practice
- The Ethics of Food Animal Production
- Animals as Scientific Objects
- The Problem with Zoos
- Wolf Hunting and the Ethics of Predator Control
- Practice and Ethics of the Use of Animals in Contemporary Art
- Animals in Folklore
- Archaeozoology
- Animals and Ecological Science
- Staging Privilege, Proximity, and “Extreme Animal Tourism”
- Commensal Species
- Lively Cities: People, Animals, and Urban Ecosystems
- Animals in Religion
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This essay surveys the representation of animals in folklore from the fables of Aesop to the search for Bigfoot. Unlike most of modern culture, folklore attributes great power, understanding, autonomy, and significance to animals. While folklorists have often found this deeply poetic, they were also made uncomfortable by the suggestion of magic and, to protect their claim to superior rationality, tried to distance themselves from folktales. The English demonized animal helpers in fairy tales, while the French gave these figures human form. The Grimm brothers and other romantics removed fairy tales from the context of everyday life by placing them in a remote realm such as an ancient civilization, a marginal social order, or the enchanted world of childhood. As the naturalistic paradigm, with its implicit anthropocentrism, declines, folk literature provides models for more balanced relationships between animals and human beings.
Keywords: animal studies, Aesop, anthropocentrism, animal helpers, Bigfoot, fairy tale, fable, folklore, Grimm brothers, juniper tree
Boria Sax, University of Illinois at Springfield
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- The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Animal Rights
- Animals in Political Theory
- Animals as Living Property
- The Human-Animal Bond
- Animal Sheltering
- Roaming Dogs
- Misothery: Contempt for Animals and Nature, Its Origins, Purposes, and Repercussions
- Continental Approaches to Animals and Animality
- Animals as Legal Subjects
- The Struggle for Compassion and Justice through Critical Animal Studies
- Interspecies Dialogue and Animal Ethics: The Feminist Care Perspective
- Cetacean Cognition
- History and Animal Agencies
- What Was It Like to Be a Cow?: History and Animal Studies
- Animals as Sentient Commodities
- Animal Work
- Animals as Reflexive Thinkers: The Aponoian Paradigm
- The Ethics of Animal Research: Theory and Practice
- The Ethics of Food Animal Production
- Animals as Scientific Objects
- The Problem with Zoos
- Wolf Hunting and the Ethics of Predator Control
- Practice and Ethics of the Use of Animals in Contemporary Art
- Animals in Folklore
- Archaeozoology
- Animals and Ecological Science
- Staging Privilege, Proximity, and “Extreme Animal Tourism”
- Commensal Species
- Lively Cities: People, Animals, and Urban Ecosystems
- Animals in Religion
- Index
