{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01694915254237288, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.445454545454545, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Human/Animal Relations in Romantic Poetry

This essay examines the productivity of Anat Pick’s notion of the creaturely for rethinking the history of human/animal relations. Identifying the Romantic period as a formative epoch for this purpose, it discusses the ways in which poems by Christopher Smart and John Clare articulate a shared mode of embodiment that extends subjectivity and agency beyond the realm of the human. From a biocentric and biosemiotic perspective that acknowledges non-human modes and experiences of existence as meaningful, these poems constitute first stepping stones toward a literary genealogy of a creaturely poetics that acknowledges non-human creatures as ‘significant others’.