The next time you peruse a bookstore, take note of how many different genres involve animals, said Laura Brown, the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English and vice provost for undergraduate education, in her March 4 lecture, "Love, Paradise and the Rise of the Animal in English Literature."

The lecture kicked off the opening of the new exhibit, "Animal Legends: From the Trojan Horse to Godzilla," at the Hirshland gallery in Kroch Library.

The exhibit, which draws from literary, art and artifact collections across campus, depicts the role of animals in storytelling throughout human history. While "bringing animals into our immediate imaginative experience seems normal ... it's a pretty new thing," she explained.

"Animal Legends" will be on display until Sept. 30 in the Hirshland Exhibition Gallery in level 2B of the Carl A. Kroch Library. Featuring artifacts, photographs, literary works and paintings from the library's collections, the exhibit portrays the different roles animals have played in legends created by humans, whether as mascot, hero or villain. The exhibit was created by the Cornell University Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and funded through the Steven E. and Evalyn Edwards Milman Fund. More information, including an online version of the exhibit, can be found at the library's Animal Legends website.

Brown described how our interactions with animals, as well as animal-centered literature, film and artwork, stemmed from the discovery of the hominoid ape and the invention of modern pet keeping in the 18th century. The discovery of the ape as a humanlike creature changed our relationship with animals, Brown explained, and suggested that animals might be able to improve their lives as humans do. Modern pet keeping, a growing phenomenon among the middle class in the 18th century, also had a profound effect on human and nonhuman interactions, she said. As the pet is distinct from all other animals in that it is never eaten, pet keeping "led to the development of new ideas about animal intelligence, souls, character, practices, breeding, dressing and maintenance."

In addition, the inclusion of animals in the daily lives of humans has been a "distinctive avenue for innovation" of such novel concepts in literature as love and paradise. Brown described how a new genre arose during the 18th century that could be called "lapdog poetry." These works typically "inspired a very unusual depiction of love" between the middle-class woman and her lapdog. The theme extended into artwork, and many paintings of the time portrayed the affectionate relationship between a woman and her pet.

Literature of the 19th century, inspired by this novel concept of love, portrayed dogs as thinking, feeling and moral creatures. Many of these stories follow the life of a dog in autobiographical form and include the question of whether dogs have souls. These types of narratives "return the reader to the loophole of possibility" when considering the afterlife, Brown said.

"I'm suggesting here that animals have been a distinctive avenue to innovation, and we have yet to fully understand how it operates in these literary works and literary history and ultimately where that avenue leads. The loophole of possibilities is still pretty wide open."

Graduate student Kate Engler is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.