Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 31 - Animals

  • from Part V - Identity
  • Edited by Angus Cleghorn, Seneca College, Canada, Jonathan Ellis, University of Sheffield
  • Book:
    Elizabeth Bishop in Context
    Published online:
    06 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021, pp 359-370

  • Summary

    This chapter explores Elizabeth Bishop’s animal poems within an ecofeminist framework, referencing her subversion of traditional religious teachings when engaging with animal otherness. Bishop’s incarnations of female animals in “Brazil, January 1, 1502,” “The Moose” and “Pink Dog” are discussed in contention with her more typical casting of animals and nature as male. With a focus on “Rainy Season; Sub-Tropics,” her use of anthropomorphism and her manipulation of boundaries is suggested as a means of traversing the expectation of what is human and what is animal. Her encounters with animal otherness are considered as reaffirmations of human selfhood and, at the same time, as gestures toward an idea of spiritual otherness. The chapter culminates with an in-depth analysis of “Roosters,” drawing together the ideas of female and animal otherness, while examining the suggestion of transcendence through nature.