Overview

According to the law of the jungle, the behavior of wild animals can be equated with natural human instincts not only for competition and reproduction, but also for violence and exploitation. Drawing on numerous novels and cultural events at the turn of the twentieth century, The Birth of a Jungle examines how the characteristics and imagery of wild animals were evoked to explore a wide range of human behaviors, including homosexuality, labor exploitation, and the lynching of African Americans.Throughout the study, Michael Lundblad emphasizes what he terms ""the discourse of the jungle"": Darwinist-Freudian constructions of ""the human"" and ""the animal"" that redefined various behaviors in relation to animal instincts. With nuanced, attentive readings, Lundblad reveals how these formulations of the human animal, despite reigning critical interpretations, were often contested rather than reinforced in Progressive-Era texts. Henry James's ""The Beast in the Jungle"" and fiction by Jack London serve as opportunities to examine changing attitudes toward sexuality and queer desire. Works like Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth and Frank Norris's The Octopus offer insights into another type of jungle: the capitalist marketplace. The real-life electrocution of a circus elephant at Coney Island and Upton Sinclair's muckraking classic, The Jungle, inform the subsequent discussion of animalized class warfare. Understandings of race and evolution are explored through the work of William James, Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes, and the role of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes ""Monkey Trial"" of 1925.Engagingly written and cogently argued, The Birth of a Jungle reveals the significance of animality in relation to the history of sexuality, literary naturalism, and critical race studies, while highlighting how the discourse of the jungle remains a disturbing yet powerful presence in today's culture.

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9780190231583

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Reviews

This book offers an innovative conceptualization of animality as a historical and theoretical paradigm that reshapes what we thought we knew about human-animal relations in the Progressive Era. The book takes risks as it aims to make important critical interventions ... It carves out a unique niche for itself by challenging us to consider how 'animality' pushes us past our own current conceptual critical categories for thinking about human-animal bonds. Journal of American Studies

Scholars aiming to do such rethinking amid this text's complex matrix of ideas should find The Birth of a Jungle an essential resource. * Ryan Hediger, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment * A substantial contribution to modern American fiction studies as well as interdisciplinary animal studies. Lundblad's literary and cultural history uncovers striking alternatives to Darwin and Freud running wild in the period obsessed with identifying, interpreting, and ultimately controlling 'animal instincts.' By problematizing histories that animalize animals alongside humans, The Birth of the Jungle explains why the scholarly practice of literary animal studies can never quite be tamed by the mandates of advocacy and activism. * Susan McHugh, author of Animal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines and Dog * The Birth of a Jungle is an important, timely consideration of both actual flesh-and-blood animals and how humans have been understood through a discourse of animality. After reading Lundblad's book, it will be impossible not to recognize the prevalence of animality in U.S. literature of this period. * Rachel Adams, author of Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America * Rigorously researched, adeptly argued, and accessibly written, Michael Lundblad's The Birth of a Jungle deserves to be read cover to cover. Illustrated with a plethora of exciting case studies-including the eroticism of Jack London's depiction of wolf-human contacts, the public electrocution of a circus elephant as evincing 1900s class warfare, and the import of racial lynching in the Tarzan series-this book brilliantly reveals a history of animality sutured in the figure of the 'jungle' as an organizing discourse for turn-of-twentieth century literature, law, science, economics, politics, and everyday life. * Marlon B. Ross, author of Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era * This book offers an innovative conceptualization of 'animality' as a historical and theoretical paradigm that reshapes what we thought we knew about human-animal relations in the Progressive Era. The book takes risks as it aims to make important critical interventions. It carves out a unique niche for itself by challenging us to consider how 'animality' pushes us past our own current conceptual critical categories for thinking about human-animal bonds. * Journal of American Studies * The Birth of the Jungle powerfully delineates a pivotal moment in U.S. cultural history in which discursive identification with the nonhuman animal went hand in hand with violent social domination. * American Literature * ...Lundblad's The Birth of a Jungle is a remarkable achievement and an important contribution to the study of Progressive-Era literature and culture. ... By analyzing animals and environments as discursive formations that produce a range of power relations and identity formations, Lundblad's work ultimately suggests that we ought to supplement our contemporary political contestations over 'actual' animals and environments with a cultural politics that attends just as vigorously to their representations. * American Literary History Online *

This book offers an innovative conceptualization of 'animality' as a historical and theoretical paradigm that reshapes what we thought we knew about human-animal relations in the Progressive Era. The book takes risks as it aims to make important critical interventions... It carves out a unique niche for itself by challenging us to consider how 'animality' pushes us past our own current conceptual critical categories for thinking about human-animal bonds. Journal of American Studies

Author Information

Michael Lundblad is Associate Professor in the Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the coeditor, with Marianne DeKoven, of Species Matters: Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory.

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