Piette, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-6774-626X (2023) Baldwin’s communicating cats. Textual Practice, 37 (7). pp. 1099-1115. ISSN: 0950-236X
Abstract
The article looks at William Baldwin’s idea of the cat as companion, the animal functioning as a potentially wild and alien companion to human sociality and family spaces. Baldwin probes the flesh-eating fears Tudor citizens harboured about the cats in their midst; and explores the witness role they play occupying liminal positions between the sexes, sectarian extremes, public and private spaces, in ways that interrogate the boundaries between animal and human zones. The essay argues that cats are dreamt as hybrid animals, wild and tame, killers and companions. Their meat-eating powers, their sexual prowess and ambiguous witnessing of human privacies are seen as triggering deep-seated anxieties fostered by the sectarian ideological conflicts of Tudor politics and religion. Baldwin’s novel also looks at the ways cats’ secret witnessing reveals the sexual secrets of the Tudor domestic sphere, as from a female point of view; and how, with Mouse-slayer’s revenge, that witnessing turns against the human as species to create a narrative of radical animal resistance to domestication and subservience.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Cats as killers; companions; animal–human relations; Derrida, Montaigne; Tudor sexual politics; meat-eating |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Date Deposited: | 30 Sep 2025 11:13 |
Last Modified: | 30 Sep 2025 11:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Group |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/0950236x.2023.2223435 |
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Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:232369 |