{"product_id":"the-counterhuman-imaginary-earthquakes-lapdogs-and-traveling-coinage-in-eighteenth-century-literature-9781501772559","title":"The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Counterhuman Imaginary\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e proposes that alongside the historical, social, and institutional structures of human reality that seem to be the sole subject of the literary text, an other-than-human world is everywhere in evidence. \u003c\/b\u003eLaura Brown finds that within eighteenth-century British literature, the human cultural imaginary can be seen, equally, as a counterhuman imaginary--an alternative realm whose scope and terms exceed human understanding or order.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough close readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope, along with lapdog lyrics, circulation narratives that give agency to inanimate objects like coins and carriages, and poetry about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Brown traces the ways presence and power of the nonhuman--weather, natural disasters, animals, even the concept of love--not only influence human creativity, subjectivity, and history but are inseparable from them. Traversing literary theory, animal studies, new materialism, ecocriticism, and affect theory, \u003ci\u003eThe Counterhuman Imaginary \u003c\/i\u003eoffers an original repudiation of the centrality of the human to advance an integrative new methodology for reading chaos, fluidity, force, and impossibility in literary culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eLaura Brown is the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eFables of Modernity, Ends of Empire, Alexander Pope, English Dramatic Form, 1660-1750\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eHomeless Dogs and\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eMelancholy Apes.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50393313181970,"sku":"9781501772559","price":159.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_43544f53-872b-45a4-92d1-417f344b701e.jpg?v=1728987927","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-counterhuman-imaginary-earthquakes-lapdogs-and-traveling-coinage-in-eighteenth-century-literature-9781501772559","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}