Margaret Cavendish

• They saluted and spoke to each other very courteously
• Animal people: Bear-men, ape-men, worm-men and followed a preofession “as was most proper for the nature of their species"
• We all do unanimously acknowledge, worship and adore the Onely, omnipotent and eternal god
• Worm-men are produced “according to the nature of their species, some are produced out of flowers, some out of roots, some out of fruits, some out of ordinary Earth"
• Worm-men, live within nature, though they faced “great prejudice” as they live underground which causes “dissolution as ruin, at best they are driven out of their homes"
• The blazing world is where “Adam fled” and the place that the protagonist is “now Empress of"
• The Empress brought “her fish and bird-men to bring her intelligence"
• Published in 1666
• Keith Thomas, 1991:

  “rejected the whole anthropocentric tradition"
• Bruce Thomas Boehrer, 2011: describes her “animal characters"
• Development of Descartes’ “Bête-machine” theory: 1641, animal behaviour is like a machine. Cavendish closes this distinction.
• Links closely to traditions of romance and travelogue e.g. Mandeville’s travels and More’s Utopia.