Overview

Child-animal encounters are omnipresent in literature, but the fact that these interactions are sometimes marked by violence remains rather underrepresented in literary studies. Thus, this volume examines the complex interplay of childhood, animality and violence in European literatures. The contributors show that animal-child conflicts are often representative of larger issues such as social and intergenerational inequalities, deeply embedded in broader ideological and social frameworks: whether read through the lens of colonialism, capitalism or communism these encounters negotiate fundamental questions about hierarchy, dominance, and agency.

Full Product Details

Author:   Valeska Bopp-Filimonov ,  Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf
Publisher:   Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG
Imprint:   J.B. Metzler
ISBN:  

9783662720585

ISBN 10:   3662720582
Pages:   177
Publication Date:   23 November 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Violent Child-Animal Encounters in Fictional Narratives – Introductory Notes.- Chapter 2. The Girl in a Beast’s Skin. Girlhood, Animality and Violence in Fairy Tales.- Chapter 3. Symbolic Violence towards Nature and Animals as a Symptom of late colonial Discourse: on Victorian Girls’ Periodicals and the Pitfalls of feminine Gentleness.- Chapter 4. “La nécessité nous instruira”. Shipwrecked Children and exotic Animals in Jules Verne’s Deux ans de Vacances.- Chapter 5. “Que no pueden defenderse”. Animal Cruelty in Children and Conceptions of Power in educative Contexts in Spain around 1900.- Chapter 6. “Without first obtaining the views of the imprisoned fly on it”. Tormented Insects in German Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries.- Chapter 7. The Child ‘merely’ wants to play. The different Perspectives in violent Encounters between Children and Animals in Russian Literature.- Chapter 8. Lessons about Animal Cruelty: The Socialization of Violence in Romanian Literature targeted at young Romanian and English-speaking Audiences.- Chapter 9. The tortured Squirrel in Alexandru Ivasiuc’s Vestibul (1967): Child-animal Violence as an Indicator of traumatic Experiences in Totalitarianism.- Chapter 10. “Some penguins go fishing and never come back”. The Aesthetics of Cluster B Psychopathology in Camilio José Cela’s The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942) and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening (2018).- Chapter 11. From Condemnation to breaking Taboos: Florence Dupré Latour’s Graphic Novel Cruelle (2016) as an autofictional Processing of child Cruelty to Animals.- Chapter 12. Unseen Characters: Human-Animal Encounters in Post-Yugoslav Literature.- Chapter 13. The Sleeping Cat (Joël Bartoloméo, 1992): A Lesson in childish Brutality.

Reviews

Author Information

Valeska Bopp-Filimonov is Junior professor for Romance Studies with special dedication to Romanian Studies at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany).  Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf is Habilitated PhD. Professor of French and Spanish Philology (Literature and Cultural Studies) at the University of Passau (Germany).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions