This book begins with the assumption that the presence of non-human creatures causes an always-already uncanny rift in human assumptions about reality. Exploring the dark side of animal nature and the otherness´ of animals as viewed by humans, and employing cutting-edge theory on non-human animals, eco-criticism, literary and cultural theory, this book takes the Gothic genre into new territory.
After the dissemination of Darwin´s theories of evolution, nineteenth-century fiction quickly picked up on the idea of the animal within´. Here, the fear explored was of an unruly, defiant, degenerate and entirely amoral animality lying (mostly) dormant within all of us. However, non-humans and humans have other sorts of encounters, too, and even before Darwin, humans have often had an uneasy relationship with animals, which, as Donna Haraway puts it, have a way of looking back´ at us. In this book, the focus is not on the animal within´ but rather on the animal with-out´: otherand entirely incomprehensible.