Main entry:

Kemp, Martin.

Title & Author:

The human animal in Western art and science / Martin Kemp.

Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Description:

xix, 307 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

Series:

Louise Smith Bross lecture series

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-297) and index.
Introduction: facing up to ourselves -- Humors, temperaments, and signs -- Fixing the signs -- Feelings and faces -- Souls and machines -- From meaning to mechanism -- Fable and fact: La Fontaine and Buffon -- Going ape -- Beastly boys and admirable animals -- Our animal cousins -- Art and atavism -- A literary-cinematic postscript.

Summary:

"From the lazy, fiddling grasshopper to the sneaky Big Bad Wolf, children's stories and fables enchant us with their portrayals of animals who act like people. But the comparisons run both ways, as metaphors, stories, and images - as well as scientific theories - throughout history remind us that humans often act like animals, and that the line separating them is not as clear as we'd like to pretend." "Here Martin Kemp explores a stunning range of images and ideas to demonstrate just how deeply these underappreciated links between humans and other fauna are embedded in our culture. Tracing those interconnections among art, science, and literature, Kemp leads us on a dazzling tour of Western thought, from Aristotelian physiognomy and its influence on phrenology to the Great Chain of Being and Darwinian evolution. We learn about the racist anthropology underlying a familiar Degas sculpture, see paintings of a remarkably simian Judas, and watch Mowgli, the man-child from Kipling's The Jungle Book, exhibit the behaviors of the beasts who raised him. Like a kaleidoscope, Kemp uses these stories to refract, reconfigure, and echo the essential truth that the way we think about animals inevitably inflects how we think about people, and vice versa."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description
Table of contents only
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

ISBN:

9780226430331 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0226430332 (cloth ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Animals in art.
Animals Symbolic aspects.
Symbolism in art.
Animals and civilization Europe.
Human-animal relationships.
Human body Symbolic aspects.
Animaux Aspect symbolique.
Symbolisme dans l'art.
Animaux et civilisation Europe.
Relations homme-animal.
Corps humain Aspect symbolique.
Animals and civilization.
Deformierung
Tierdarstellung
Darstellung
Kunst
Körper
Mensch
Physiognomie
Symbolik
Tiere
Ästhetik
Anatomie
Dieren.
Diergedrag.
Mensen.
Beeldende kunsten.
Djur i konsten.
Djur symboliska aspekter.
Människokroppen symboliska aspekter.
Människokroppen i konsten.
Djur och människor.
Symbolism in art Europe.
Body, Human Symbolic aspects
Europe.

Added entries:

Louise Smith Bross lecture series.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 255184
Call No.: BIB 185272
Status: Available