In an attempt to respond to the West’s general obliviousness to nonhuman semiosis, this article proposes a method for appreciating nonhuman poetics. By combining the critical tools of poetics and literary theory with insights from ethology and biosemiotics, Stuart Cooke outlines a method of criticism for nonhuman creative compositions. Drawing on the work of Gerald Bruns, Elizabeth Grosz, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Cooke begins by theorizing a poetics that attends to the ecology of forces that produce, and are produced by, a work rather than the intentions of a single artist. Cooke proposes that an ethological poetics emphasizes the expressive capacity of materials across a range of written, musical, visual, and performative structures. By studying these expressive forces, Cooke argues, we can extend our appreciation of art and poetics into multispecies domains. The challenge is not to focus on the “meaning” or intention of nonhuman artworks but to study their disruptive, and exciting, forces. The third part of the essay is a case study of an Australian songbird, the Albert’s lyrebird, whose remarkable performance Cooke reads in terms of an ethological poetics. Producing an operatic complex of song, instrumentation, dance, and stage design, the male lyrebird’s composition is thoroughly entangled with the flora and fauna of his umwelt. Resistant to categorization by any generic label, Cooke argues that the lyrebird’s composition is best approached in the terms of transgressive, avant-garde performative and sound poetics—although it escapes such terms, thinking about the bird’s composition in this way compels us into a relation with its territory.

中文翻译：

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走向民族诗学

为了回应西方对非人类符号学的普遍遗忘，本文提出了一种欣赏非人类诗学的方法。通过将诗学和文学理论的重要工具与人类学和生物符号学的见解相结合，斯图尔特·库克（Stuart Cooke）提出了一种批评非人类创造性作品的方法。库克借鉴杰拉尔德·布伦斯，伊丽莎白·格罗兹，吉勒斯·德勒兹和菲利克斯·瓜塔里的作品，首先对一种诗学进行理论化，这种诗学关注的是产生和产生的力的生态，而不是单个艺术家的意图。库克建议，一种行为学诗学应强调材料在一系列书面，音乐，视觉和表演结构中的表现力。通过研究这些表现力，库克认为，我们可以将对艺术和诗学的欣赏扩展到多物种领域。挑战不是专注于非人类艺术品的“意义”或意图，而是研究其破坏性和令人兴奋的力量。本文的第三部分是对澳大利亚鸣禽，阿尔伯特的琴鸟的个案研究，库克从民族学诗学的角度解读了他的出色表现。雄性七弦琴的演奏构成了歌曲，乐器，舞蹈和舞台设计的歌剧情结，与他的雨伞的动植物完全交织在一起。反对任何通用标签的分类，库克认为，用过激的，前卫的表演和声音诗学的术语来最好地探究琴鸟的成分，尽管它逃避了这些术语，