Introduction: ‘Beastly Modernisms’

Opening the volume, our introduction will situate the contributions to Beastly Modernisms within the field of modernist animal studies scholarship and explore the concept of ‘beastly modernisms’ that organises the volume as whole. Surveying the important contributions to the field, from foundational work by Carrie Rohman, Cary Wolfe, Margot Norris, Kari Weil, and Derek Ryan to the more recent contributions of Rachel Murray, Cathryn Setz, Peter Adkins and Caroline Hovanec, the introduction charts the development and diversification of work on animals in modernism. We outline our rationale for decentering the canon and geographies of modernism and point readers to literary animal studies scholarship on canonical writers not included in our volume. Alongside this, the introduction engages with the significant theoretical field that informs critical animal studies.Our introduction also propounds and tests our conception of the ‘beastly’ as a speculative frame for encountering the non-human knowledges and animal proximities that manifest in modernist literature and culture. Our introduction ends with an overview of the ‘beastly’ animals and ideas contained in the chapters that follow.