Cockroach

(Paperback)

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Description

Attempts to chronicle the cockroach's intellectual and emotional life have been made only within the last century when a scientist titled his essay on the cockroach "The Intellectual and Emotional World of the Cockroach", and artists as radically different as Franz Kafka and Don Marquis created equally memorable cockroach protagonists. At least since Classical Greece, authors have brought cockroach characters into the foreground to speak for the weak and downtrodden, the outsiders, those forced to survive on the underside of dominant human cultures. Cockroaches have become the subjects of songs (La Cucaracha), have competed in "roachraces" and have even ended up in recipes. In this accessible, sympathetic and often humorous book, Marion Copeland examines the natural history, symbolism and cultural significance of this poorly understood and much-maligned insect.

Reviews

thoroughly researched, eloquently written and richly illustrated . . . an outstanding polemic in support of a much-loathed creature * Times Literary Supplement *
this gripping little book is crawling with anecdotes . . . * New Scientist *

Author Bio

Marion Copeland is former Professor of English at Holyoke Community College, Massachusetts, US.