Animal Fictions

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Stories with animal characters have long been used to both entertain and to teach, but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the development of novels written from "realistic" animal perspectives, against the backdrop of radical social, technological, and environmental changes. Works such as Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, and Watership Down were not only best-sellers that captivated readers of all ages, they were—and still are—part of vigorous debates about animal and human nature, ethics, and the real-world impact of art. In our conversations, papers, and if students choose, creative work, we will analyze novels from the perspectives of animals, as well as several screen adaptations, exploring the social and intellectual contexts of these works and engaging with the questions they raise, such as: How can a human portray a non-human point of view? To what extent are these works really about animals, as opposed to about ourselves? How have authors (intentionally or unintentionally) mapped some very human ideas about things like gender, class, and race onto their animal worlds? And how do readers respond to the pleasures and challenges of tales about other species?