What roles did animals play in the construction of early modern identities? In this volume, international scholars working in the disciplines of history, art history and literature provide suggestive and probing answers. Their essays investigate how animals - horses, dogs, pigs, fish, cattle, sheep, birds, rhinoceroses, even sea-monsters and other creatures - served people in Europe, England, the Americas and Africa to defend, contest or transcend the boundaries of early modern identities.