Consumable Metaphors: Attitudes Towards Animals and Vegetarianism in Nineteenth-Century France by Ceri Crossley

Abstract

MLR,I02.2, 2007 515 treatmentof the immediate past both from ideas and philosophers of theEnlighten ment into fiction and from the spillover of real-life drama of revolution into staged drama. The collection contains avariety of approaches: close textual readings of fiction and plays, a quantitative analysis of play titles,and exploration of concepts (patois) and paradigms (volcanoes and the sublime). The relatively limited range of genres under scrutiny provides coherence. Three chapters discuss very differentquestions in fiction; the threeon politics and theatre come to quite differentconclusions. NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY MAIRE F. CROSS Consumable Metaphors: Attitudes towardsAnimals and Vegetarianism inNineteenth Century France. By CERI CROSSLEY. (French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, I7) Bern: Peter Lang. 2005. 322 pp. ?37. ISBN 978 3-03-9IOI90-0. The last decade has seen the spectacular growth of awide range of publications often gathered under theumbrella termof 'Animal Studies'. The majority of these publica tions areAnglo-Saxon, so Ceri Crossley's book is awelcome addition to the relatively small corpus of French research into animals. The title,Consumable Metaphors, implies that animal representation rather than attitudes to real creatures is the focus of the study.Yet, even though some consi deration is given to literary and other cultural representations of animals, the sub title expresses more accurately the fact that the book is essentially concerned with nineteenth-century attitudes towards animals inFrance, particularly moral questions of cruelty and exploitation. This is, of course, another way of envisaging animals metaphorically, and the authormentions inhis conclusion that thebook has 'more to do with themoral and social preoccupations of the French nineteenth century than with the animals themselves' (p. 289). Animal studies encompass awide range of is sues, such as relationships between human and non-human, the definition of human and non-human beings, (non-)ethical attitudes towards animals, theplace of animals in the natural world, associations of animals with vulnerable human beings, and the meanings and presence of animals inhuman culture. These are, of course, often in terrelated. In addition, thepresence of contrasting views on animals, particularly on theirmoral status, has to be emphasized in any study retracing a history of ideas in this field.Nevertheless, a tighter thematic focusmight have given thebook a stronger feel of unity.As the author himself points out, advocates of vegetarianism are often more concerned with human health thanwith animal welfare. The volume isstructured as fifteen chapters centred either on a relevantauthor or on a theme, and evolves chronologically inorder 'to investigate thedifferentdefinitions of animal nature proposed by nineteenth-century currents of thought inFrance' (p. i i). The introductory pages ask the essential questions explored through the book and place thework in the context of recent publications inFrench and English on animal issues,which gives it a useful contemporary relevance. Emerging ideologies regard ing animal protection and vegetarianism aswell as attitudes towards natural history explored at the end of the eighteenth century by both famous writers and unknown eccentrics are then considered. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 present thinkerswith entirely opposing views on themoral status of animals: Jean-Antoine Gleizes's philosophy of vegetarianism, JeanReynaud's visions of a humankind born to control animals and animal passions, seen as dangerously immoral, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's theories of domestication and their influence on nineteenth-century perceptions of human animal relationships. The remaining chapters bring the vital question of animals in relation topolitics and religion to the fore,firstintroducing us to thework ofAlphonse 5I6 Reviews de Lamartine, Alexis Godin, Alphonse Toussenel, and JulesMichelet, then consi dering the vivisection debate. Chapters 13 and I4 discuss how, in the latterpart of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, in spite of the lack of success of vegetarianism, French society opened itself to the cause of the animals. In some ways this book is a perfect French sequel toKeith Thomas's Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes inEngland I500-I800 (London: Allen Lane, I983). A few omissions are surprising (Zola is not considered, for example, Cuvier and Lamarck hardly mentioned), but the numerous and relevant referenceswhich illustrate the arguments show an impressive knowledge of the topic. Indeed, one of the strong points of the book is to examine...