Publisher Description

In an eminentlyapproachable work of wide cultural reach and meticulous scholarship, DominicPettman undertakes an unprecedented examination of how animals shape theunderstanding and expression of love between people. He argues that in ourutilization of the animal in our amorous expression, we acknowledge that whatwe adore in our beloveds is not (only) their humanity, but theircreatureliness.

Author Biography

Dominic Pettman is professor of culture and media at Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research. His books include Infinite Distraction, Human Error: Species-Being and Media Machines (Minnesota, 2011), Look at the Bunny, Love and Other Technologies, and Sonic Intimacy.

Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Introduction: On the Stupidity of Oysters
1. Divining Creaturely Love
2. Horsing Around: The Marriage Blanc of Nietzsche, Andreas-Salomé, and Rée
3. Groping for an Opening: Rilke between Animal and Angel
4. Electric Caresses: Rilke, Balthus, and Mitsou
5. Between Perfection and Temptation: Musil, Claudine, and Veronica
6. The Biological Travesty
7. "The Creature Whom We Love": Proust and Jealousy
8. The Love Tone: Capture and Captivation
9. "The Soft Word That Comes Deceiving": Fournival's Bestiary of Love
10. The Cuckold and the Cockatrice: Fourier and Hazlitt
11. The Animal Bride and Horny Toads
12. Unsettled Being: Ovid's Metamorphoses
13. Fickle Metaphysics
14. Nymphomania and Faunication
15. Senseless Arabesques: Wendy and Lucy
16. The Goat in the Machine (A Reprise)
Conclusion: On Cetaceous Maidens
Epilogue: Animal Magnetism and Alternative Currents (or Tesla and the White Dove)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Review

"Pettman has written yet another absorbing, witty, moving, and smart book about the question of human exceptionalism, this time in relation to desire and love, attending especially to literary and artistic works. The book makes a significant contribution particularly to a revisionist reading of modernist literary/artistic history with relation to the presence of the nonhuman animal, or the creaturely."—Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz"Dominic Pettman writes thoughtful, light-fingered books on significant questions that are simultaneously timely and timeless. In Creaturely Love, he takes up the perennial awkwardness that haunts every effort to etherealize romance: the proximity of our loving bodies to the critter-creatures that rut and tread and mount and cover each other just outside our windows. Drawing on the newest (and some of the oldest) thinking about humans and animals, Pettman here recalls us to ourselves—by ruminating on just how hard it is to say what exactly that might mean."—D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University
"Bettman's ideas and readings will doubtless find application in future scholarship; his text makes readers eager to see all genres of cultural production in the new framework this exciting work provides."—The Goose"The book offers an interesting engagement with the complexity of expressions of affection."—CHOICE connect

Long Description

In an eminentlyapproachable work of wide cultural reach and meticulous scholarship, DominicPettman undertakes an unprecedented examination of how animals shape theunderstanding and expression of love between people. He argues that in ourutilization of the animal in our amorous expression, we acknowledge that whatwe adore in our beloveds is not (only) their humanity, but theircreatureliness.

Review Quote

"Pettman has written yet another absorbing, witty, moving, and smart book about the question of human exceptionalism, this time in relation to desire and love, attending especially to literary and artistic works. The book makes a significant contribution particularly to a revisionist reading of modernist literary/artistic history with relation to the presence of the nonhuman animal, or the creaturely."--Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz "Dominic Pettman writes thoughtful, light-fingered books on significant questions that are simultaneously timely and timeless. In Creaturely Love , he takes up the perennial awkwardness that haunts every effort to etherealize romance: the proximity of our loving bodies to the critter-creatures that rut and tread and mount and cover each other just outside our windows. Drawing on the newest (and some of the oldest) thinking about humans and animals, Pettman here recalls us to ourselves--by ruminating on just how hard it is to say what exactly that might mean."--D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University

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