"Knowing Animals showcases original explorations of the 'animal turn' by new and eminent scholars in philosophy, literary criticism, art history and cultural studies. The essays collected here describe a lively bestiary of cultural organisms, whose flesh is (at least partly) conceptual and textual: paper tigers, beast fables, anthropomorphs, humanimals, l'animot. In so doing, they investigate the benefits of knowing animals differently: more closely, less definitively, more carefully, less certainly."--Jacket.