This work explains the origins of the familiar and the unfamiliar in everyday speech and literature, including the colloquial and the proverbial. It embraces archaeology, history, religion, the arts, science, mythology and characters from fiction.

Whether a secularized morality, biblical worldview, or unstated set of mores, the Victorian period can and always will be distinguished from those before and after for its pervasive sense of the "proper way" of thinking, speaking, doing, and acting. Animals in literature taught Victorian children how to be behave. If you are a postmodern posthumanist, you might argue, "But the animals in literature did not write their own accounts." Animal characters may be the creations of writers’ imagination, but animals did and do exist in their own right, as did and do humans. The original essays in Animals and Their Children in Victorian explore the representation of animals in children’s literature by resisting an anthropomorphized perception of them. Instead of focusing on the domestication of animals, this book analyzes how animals in literature "civilize" children, teaching them how to get along with fellow creatures—both human and nonhuman.

This collection of essays is multidisciplinary and wide-ranging. The authors, literary and theatre specialists, scientists from various fields, and a psychiatrist, present Shakespeare’s works from very different perspectives, highlighting a new outlook on the current ways of tackling Shakespeare. Teachers of English all over Europe will find this book an eclectic tool which allows them to present Shakespeare in a challengingly vibrant way. To explore Shakespeare’s plays, the authors deploy a range of filters such as nutrition, plant sciences, geography, art history, costume design, music, comics and street art. They show how the Bard can still be relevant to our lives in the 21st century.