Speaking for Animals: Animal Autobiographical Writing

✍ Scribed by Margo DeMello (ed.)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 280
• Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

For thousands of years, in the myths and folktales of people around the world, animals have spoken in human tongues. Western and non-Western literary and folkloric traditions are filled with both speaking animals, some of whom even narrate or write their own autobiographies. Animals speak, famously, in children’s stories and in cartoons and films, and today, social networking sites and blogs are both sites in which animals—primarily pets—write about their daily lives and interests. Speaking for Animals is a compilation of chapters written from a variety of disciplines that attempts to get a handle on this cross cultural and longstanding tradition of animal speaking and writing. It looks at speaking animals in literature, religious texts, poetry, social networking sites, comic books, and in animal welfare materials and even library catalogs, and addresses not just the "whys" of speaking animals, but the implications, for the animals and for ourselves.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Speaking for Animals......Page 2
Title Page
......Page 5
Copyright Page
......Page 6
Table of Contents
......Page 8
List of Figures
......Page 11
Introduction
......Page 12
PART I (Mis) Representing Animals: The Limits and Possibilities of Representation......Page 26
1 What Do We Want from Talking Animals? Reflections on Literary Representations of Animal Voices and Minds......Page 28
2 Our Animals, Ourselves: Representing Animal Minds in Timothy and The White Bone......Page 46
3 Investigations of a Dog, by a Dog: Between Anthropocentrism and Canine-Centrism......Page 60
PART II Animals in Human Traditions......Page 71
4 With Dogs and Lions as Witnesses: Speaking Animals in the History of Christianity......Page 73
5 The Speaking Animal: Non-Human Voices in Comics......Page 83
6 Who’ll Let the Dogs In? Animals, Authorship, and the Library Catalog......Page 89
PART III Animal Self, Human Self......Page 97
7 Mistresses as Masters: Voicing Female Power Through the Subject Animal in Two Nineteenth-Century Animal Autobiographies......Page 99
8 Catster.com: Creating Feline Identities Online......Page 113
9 Identity, Community, and Grief: The Role of Bunspace in Human and Rabbit Lives......Page 125
PART IV Interspecies Communication and Connection......Page 140
10 Talking Dogs, Companion Capital, and the Limits of Bio-Political Fitness......Page 142
11 If We Could Talk to the Animals: On Changing the (Post) Human Subject......Page 158
PART V Speaking and Knowing: Accessing Animal Subjectivity......Page 169
12 The Power of Testimony: The Speaking Animal’s Plea for Understanding in a Selection of Eighteenth-Century British Poetry......Page 171
13 “Straight from the Horse’s Mouth”: Equine Memoirs and Autobiographies......Page 187
14 First Friend, First Words: Speaking of/to Talking Dogs......Page 201
PART VI The Ethics and Value of Speaking for Animals......Page 212
15 Horse Talk: Horses and Human(e) Discourses......Page 214
16 Speaking For Dogs: The Role of Dog Biographies in Improving Canine Welfare in Bangkok, Thailand......Page 238
17 Billy and Kani......Page 252
Contributors......Page 271
Index......Page 277