Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Animal Presences: Tussles with Anthropomorphism

Animal Presences: Tussles with Anthropomorphism Comparative Critical Studies 2, 3, pp. 311–22 © BCLA 2005 CHAPTER TWO How close allied are humans and animals? What are the possibilities of interpretation between them? Can human language encompass animal experience? Can animals inform our understanding of their natures and our own? The troubles and the jokes generated from the primary question of kinship between humans and animals have stimulated writers across the centuries. Often in literature animals have stood in for humans: in fables, foxes, geese, and donkeys parade their supposedly human traits: wiliness for the fox, panic for the goose, obstinacy for the donkey (redeemed sometimes in Christian re-workings as lowliness). The interest is certainly not in ‘the whole animal’ but in the animal as pointer to or satire on human behaviour. Behind such images is the assumption that, when all’s said, the human is other than animal, favoured in peculiar ways. In a surprising sonnet, John Donne in the 1620’s challenges the animals for their willingness to be subject to man and challenges too the ordering of their subjection: Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food for me, being more pure than I, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Critical Studies Edinburgh University Press

Animal Presences: Tussles with Anthropomorphism

Comparative Critical Studies , Volume 2 (3): 311 – Oct 1, 2005

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/animal-presences-tussles-with-anthropomorphism-slB9IOq2le

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
1744-1854
eISSN
1750-0109
DOI
10.3366/ccs.2005.2.3.311
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Comparative Critical Studies 2, 3, pp. 311–22 © BCLA 2005 CHAPTER TWO How close allied are humans and animals? What are the possibilities of interpretation between them? Can human language encompass animal experience? Can animals inform our understanding of their natures and our own? The troubles and the jokes generated from the primary question of kinship between humans and animals have stimulated writers across the centuries. Often in literature animals have stood in for humans: in fables, foxes, geese, and donkeys parade their supposedly human traits: wiliness for the fox, panic for the goose, obstinacy for the donkey (redeemed sometimes in Christian re-workings as lowliness). The interest is certainly not in ‘the whole animal’ but in the animal as pointer to or satire on human behaviour. Behind such images is the assumption that, when all’s said, the human is other than animal, favoured in peculiar ways. In a surprising sonnet, John Donne in the 1620’s challenges the animals for their willingness to be subject to man and challenges too the ordering of their subjection: Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food for me, being more pure than I,

Journal

Comparative Critical StudiesEdinburgh University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2005

There are no references for this article.