Animal Studies and the Eighteenth Century: The Nature of the Beast

This essay offers an overview of important historical and theoretical issues in animal studies scholarship on the long eighteenth century, 1660–1750. It draws connections among the theological, social, and ontological debates of the early modern period and discusses how these debates helped to shape current questions in posthumanist and animal studies research. Recent works in animal studies about the eighteenth century explore anthropocentrism and the human–animal divide; sensibility and anti‐cruelty legislation; thing theory and personhood; and literary subjectivity in the broader context of more‐than‐human ecologies.