Man's Dominion and the Human/Animal Relationship

In European literature that deals with animals – beginning, at the latest, in the ninth century, and continuing at least through the end of the nineteenth – there is one critical narrative with which readers should be familiar. Britain, as with the rest of Europe, was at this time a heavily Christian country. Regardless of the personal religious beliefs of any particular person, that meant nearly everyone was conversant with a few core source texts, including the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, which is considered one of the foundational stories of the Christian tradition. In this narrative, found in the book of Genesis, God creates the Heavens and the Earth, then all the animals of the world, then the first man (Adam), then the first woman. Adam is then granted, directly by the divine word, dominion over all of the beasts...