How Is It Then with the Whale?: Using Scientific Data to Explore Textual Embodiment

According to Glen Love in Practical Ecocriticism, ecocriticism's primary challenge is the engagement of the nonhuman world in critical analysis. To engage one aspect of the nonhuman world, the animal "other" and its role in literature, ecocritics must consult scientific studies of the sensory, cognitive, and behavioral worlds of animals. Current studies are upending previously held scientific and cultural assumptions about many animals, and the idea of "animal" itself. This essay presents examples of such research in the study of the avian brain and visual system, then goes on to examine the iconic embodiment of the sperm whale in Melville's Moby-Dick.