Autorentext

Gordon McMullan is Professor of English at King's College London. He has written about early modern drama, late-life creativity and cultures of commemoration and has edited plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He is a recipient of the Sam Wanamaker Award from Shakespeare's Globe and is a Fellow of the English Association and of the Royal Society of Arts.

Klappentext

How does prejudice grow and mutate? What does intolerance, when transferred from human beings onto animals, do to those creatures? And what, in return, does it do to us? Cormorant is the gripping story of a 'greedy' bird hated across the world, the object of global conflict between the fishing industry on the one hand and environmental science on the other. Gordon McMullan's book reveals that cormorants have been loathed for centuries, a detestation that has metamorphosed over time. Drawing on fields which include literature, art history and zoology, and ranging from America to China and from Britain to Peru, Cormorant explores racism, xenophobia and capitalism through the remarkable story of a bird. McMullan argues that if in the present we are to recognize prejudicial attitudes towards animals and our fellow human beings, then we need to look to the past to understand how those viewpoints have taken hold.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. Evil cormorant; 2. Cormorant and pelican; 3. Greedy cormorant; 4. Cormorant shit; 5. Invasive cormorant; 6. Indigenous cormorant (cormorant and pelican, part two); Conclusion: likeness.