Introduction: Human–Animal Studies and the Eighteenth Century

The Introduction to the Special Issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation titled "Animal, All Too Animal" appears at a time when debates about human reason, language, and consciousness central to postructuralist theories of the nineties are beginning to be supplemented by—and even confronted with—a recognition that humans always existed among nonhuman creatures. As this introduction describes, "Animal, All Too Animal" explores the Englightenment's rearticulation of enw and more intimate relationships with nonhumans; this history is not only populated by men of reason and women of feeling, but by the birds, dogs, apes, and horses with whom humans of different genders, ethnicities, and classes enjoyed—or suffered—increasing intimacies, and distances.