In the Eyes of the Beholder: Towards Depicting the Dog in the Nineteenth Century
In this paper I expand my work in The Dog in the Dickensian Imagination to argue that the empathetic depiction of dogs that established itself in literature and painting in the late eighteenth century, and continued to develop, represented less a new departure in cultural perceptions of the dog than...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2018-12-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/cve/4052 |
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| Summary: | In this paper I expand my work in The Dog in the Dickensian Imagination to argue that the empathetic depiction of dogs that established itself in literature and painting in the late eighteenth century, and continued to develop, represented less a new departure in cultural perceptions of the dog than a return to those that had subsisted before the appearance in England in 1576 of the mechanically-printed, mass-produced and many times reissued Geneva Bible, the Bible Shakespeare read. As the Victorian biblical scholar H. B. Tristram pointed out, ‘the dog is mentioned nearly forty times in Scripture, [but] there is scarcely a single instance in which it is not spoken of with more or less of contempt or aversion’. I draw on texts and images to support my belief that in late medieval and early modern England the stance towards the dog was markedly unbiblical, while the authoritatively expressed ‘contempt or aversion’ made familiar through the Geneva Bible significantly influenced society’s attitudes to dogs in Protestant Britain. From the outset, the adverse effect conflicted with an established and persisting association of the dog with fidelity. The idea of fidelity assumes a connection with us. From the abiding and revivified recognition of this connection evolved the inclination to observe dogs closely, both as a species and as individuals. It is on the association between the ways in which the nature of that connection (or the betrayal of it) are presented before and after the advent of the Geneva Bible that this paper focuses. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |