ABSTRACT
Harold Williams's threefold characterisation of culture can be usefully applied to concepts about animals in the Romantic period. This chapter indicates how Lord Byron's theriophily was drawn from a classical and Renaissance tradition of scepticism which was considered unacceptably out-of-date even in his own time. It was also suspect in orthodox circles because it related to French philosophical scepticism, and thus was associated with Jacobinism, and, as a result of this, Byron's work written in this spirit was widely misread as simply misanthropic. The chapter shows that animal-related topics had a new or emergent importance in the Romantic period. Questions about liberty, equality, fraternity, political franchise and the pursuit of happiness, raised in the context of the American and French Revolutions, were brought to bear upon not only the relationships between different human groups, but also those between human beings and other animals.
