Animal Sanctity and Animal Sacrifice: How Post-Darwinian Fiction Treats Animal Victims

Dissertation, Simon Fraser University (Canada) (1989)
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Abstract

This dissertation analyses animal victims in fiction written since 1859, the year Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. It explores the ways in which particular stories try to address the reality of the autonomous animal, and notes the kinds of resistance evident in the stories' attempts to derive meaning from the animal victim. It examines the specific challenges the animal victim brings to bear against the conventions of indifference or compassion that reinforce anthropocentrism. The modern treatment of animal victims pushes fiction into boundary situations where conventions collapse and ways of knowing the world are shaken. At the same time the animal victim shapes the narrative world and addresses significant conflicts in modern life. ;Fiction manifests contemporary discomfort with the animal victim. In this investigation, analysis proceeds primarily upon close reading of the conflicts surrounding animal victims in individual works of fiction. In terms of overall structure, stories are classified according to specific kinds of conflicts embodied in the animal victim. The opening chapter provides an historical background and notes several theoretical complications involved in aggression against animals. The next five chapters deal one-by-one with categories of fiction in which the victimized animal is more and more deeply implicated in diverse cultural dilemmas. The categories are these: animal victims in the wild, animal victims in urban settings, sexual conflict and the animal victim, myth and the animal victim, and animal victims doubly abused by narrative strategies. ;This study speculates that, with respect to art and its faithfulness to life, modern fiction has realized that animals are not passive recipients of human projection, and that violence against animals is perpetrated upon beings whose reality places a legitimate claim upon cultural attention. The aim of the discussion is to establish that modern fiction is exploring ways in which ethics and art can truly acknowledge animal identity

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