Canines in Cervantes and Velázquez: An Animal Studies Reading of Early Modern Spain (New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies)

The study of the creation of canine breeds in early modern Europe, especially Spain, aids in composing and illustrating the different constructs against which notions of human identity were forged. This book is the first comprehensive history of early modern Spanish dogs and it evaluates how two of Spain's most celebrated and canonical cultural figures of this period, the artist Diego Velazquez and the author Miguel de Cervantes, radically question humankind's sixteenth-century anthropocentric self-fashioning. In general, this study illuminates how Animal Studies can offer new perspectives to understanding Hispanism, giving readers a fresh approach to the historical, literary and artistic complexity of early modern Spain The study of the creation of canine breeds in early modern Europe, especially Spain, illustrates the different constructs against which notions of human identity were forged. This book is the first comprehensive history of early modern Spanish dogs and it evaluates how two of Spain's most celebrated and canonical cultural figures of this period, the artist Diego Velázquez and the author Miguel de Cervantes, radically question humankind's sixteenth-century anthropocentric self-fashioning. In general, this study illuminates how Animal Studies can offer new perspectives to understanding Hispanism, giving readers a fresh approach to the historical, literary and artistic complexity of early modern Spain. To date, no scholarly history of early modern Spanish dogs has been published. Aside from carrying out this task, this book evaluates the representation of dogs in the work of the artist Diego Velázquez and the author Miguel de Cervantes. In general, this study highlights the importance of Animal Studies in providing readers a fresh approach to the historical, artistic and literary complexity of early modern Spain The hidden dog A Cervantine animal exemplum: animal studies and "the dialogue of the dogs" When the dog is a book: a post-human ethics in Cervantes As death approaches: the dog in Las Meninas.