Poeticizing the “Pet of the Parlor”: Domesticated Canaries in Victorian Periodicals

Burton, Catherine

doi:10.1080/08905495.2017.1251066

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Research that has embraced the 'animal turn' has sought to integrate animals into wider historiographies and demonstrated how the shifting status, value, and domestication of animals shaped the lives of those who encountered and engaged with them (Almeroth-Williams, 2019;Amato, 2015;Fudge, 2002;Grier, 2006;Howell, 2015;Kean, 1998;Kete, 1994;Ritvo, 1987a;Tague, 2015;Worboys et al, 2018). Scholarship has covered a wide terrain of subjects including the charting of the emergence of modern forms of pet-keeping in domestic settings (Burton, 2017;Flegel, 2015;Grier, 2006;Kean, 2018;Kete, 1994;Ritvo, 1987aRitvo, , 1987bTague, 2015;Thomas, 1983;Worboys et al, 2018), the consideration of how ordinary people's everyday lives were shaped by encounters with working and 'useful' animals in urban settings (Almeroth-Williams, 2019), and the examination of shifting ideas relating to animal rights, animal cruelty and the rise of humanitarianism (Flegel, 2012;Fudge, 2002Fudge, , 2006Kean, 1998;Milton, 2019).…”

Section: ***mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…xviii Birds -a common pet in the Victorian household -were popularly kept in the institutions, probably because of the modest amount of space, hands-on care, and resources they required. Their commonness in the Victorian household meant that birds acquired the status as a quintessential symbol of domesticity (Burton, 2017). Birds were a feature in the infirmaries of Barnardo's homes, where they were thought to provide interest and comfort to sick children, particularly in their ability to elicit joy and delight through birdsong.…”

Section: Pets In the Homesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘The many lessons which the care of some gentle, loveable animal would give’: animals, pets, and emotions in children’s welfare institutions, 1870–1920

Soares

2021

The History of the Family

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This article explores the significance of animals and pets in the domestic and 'familial' life of the two largest children's residential welfare institutions operating in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. The article argues that children's institutions employed animals as pedagogical tools to shape children's emotions and behaviours and to construct idealised notions about family life and childhood. Using institutional periodicals the essay examines how literary and visual respresnetations of animals sought to inculcate values of kindness, sympathy, compassion and benevolence in child readers, while also imparting important lessons about animal care, childcare, parenthood, responsibility, and humanitarianism. The article proceeds to analyse how animals featured in the everyday lives of institutionalised children, and examines how pet-keeping helped to enhance a sense of home and family life for poor children, and the meanings that children and young people invested in these relationships. The essay broadens understandings of working class engagement with animals, and the meanings and importance of a range of pets in the lives of poor children in alternative family settings. In doing so, the essay offers a new way of exploring family life in alternative and npn-traditional household settings, and provides insight into the social, emotional and material experiences of childhood in institutional settings.

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Section: ***mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pets In the Homesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The many lessons which the care of some gentle, loveable animal would give’: animals, pets, and emotions in children’s welfare institutions, 1870–1920

Soares

2021

The History of the Family

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The domestication and cultural significance of the canary

Svanberg

2024

The Canary

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Song of the Ovsîanka: Enhanced Nature of the Urban Canary in Imperial St. Petersburg (1880–1900)

Petri

2019

Soc. Animals

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This article explores a stylized version of “natural” birdsong as an element of the soundscape of a historical city, late-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg. From 1880 to 1900, canaries were brought to the city in great numbers from hatcheries located in the Russian countryside. Their song was the ovsîanka, a mix of melodies acquired from wild Russian birds. This song reflects “enhanced nature,” linking human intentionality to the agency of a nonhuman animal, the canary, and both to the city. Breeders, merchants, keepers, and birds formed a super-urban assemblage spanning the city and the countryside. Canaries, like human migrants flooding to the city during this time, retained their strong village roots, and their urban role depended on them. In this super-urban assemblage, the canaries’ urban performance was an expression of their modified and contextual agency, though their agency was assembled and authorized by human-nonhuman networks engendered by the city.

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Poeticizing the “Pet of the Parlor”: Domesticated Canaries in Victorian Periodicals

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

‘The many lessons which the care of some gentle, loveable animal would give’: animals, pets, and emotions in children’s welfare institutions, 1870–1920

‘The many lessons which the care of some gentle, loveable animal would give’: animals, pets, and emotions in children’s welfare institutions, 1870–1920

The domestication and cultural significance of the canary

Song of the Ovsîanka: Enhanced Nature of the Urban Canary in Imperial St. Petersburg (1880–1900)

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