Capture : University of Minnesota Press : 9781517909635 : 1517909635 : 29 Sep 2020 : Reading canonical works of the nineteenth century through the modern transformation of human&;animal relations From Audubon&;s still-life watercolors to Muybridge&;s trip-wire locomotion studies, from Melville&;s epic chases to Poe&;s detective hunts, the nineteenth century witnessed a surge of artistic, literary, and scientific treatments that sought to &;capture&; the truth of animals at the historical moment when animals were receding from everyday view. In Capture, Antoine Traisnel reveals how the drive to contain and record disappearing animals was a central feature and organizing pursuit of the nineteenth-century U.S. cultural canon. Capture offers a critical genealogy of the dominant representation of animals as elusive, precarious, and endangered that came to circulate widely in the nineteenth century. Traisnel argues that &;capture&; is deeply continuous with the projects of white settler co