Literary Naturalism in North America: : Nonhuman Animals as Anthropomorphised Symbols
- Autores: Irati Jiménez Pérez
- Localización: Animal Ethics Review (AER), ISSN-e 2696-4643, Vol. 5, Nº. 1, 2025
- Idioma: catalán
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The representation of nonhuman animals in literature has always beencharacterised by a process of anthropomorphisation. On the one hand,this may be due to the traditional human exceptionalism present inWestern cultures in most historical periods; and, on the other hand, to thedifficulty that humans face in imagining other ways of being beyond oown. Thus, literary creations have traditionally tended to fall into theanthropomorphisation of animals; that is, to represent them with humancharacteristics so that “it is possible to give the illusion that theirexperience is being reproduced” (Simons 2002, 116). However, with theestablishment of the animal rights movement in the nineteenth century,works of fiction constituted a way to try to proliferate this animalist poiof view.As a consequence of the rise of scientific knowledge and testablishment of the city as the centre of society, there was a need for anew literary representation of nonhuman animals that enacted theimportance of nature as well as attempted to grasp nonhuman animals.In this study I will analyse Ernest T. Seton’s Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallacand Jack London’s The Call of the Wild to determine if they actuallyintroduce a nonanthropomorphic perspective. In order to do so, I willexamine these works by focusing on appearance, communication andmental life.
