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Full-Text Articles in American Literature
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Non/human: (Re)seeing the “Animal” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature uses canonical literary texts as specific anchor points for charting the unstable relations between human and nonhuman animals throughout the century. I argue that throughout the nineteenth century, there are distinct shifts in the way(s) humans think about, discuss, and represent nonhuman animals, and understanding these shifts can change the way we interpret the literature and the culture(s). Moreover, I supplement and integrate those literary anchors, when appropriate, with texts from contemporaneous science, law, art, and other primary and secondary source materials. For example, the first chapter, “Cooper’s Animal Movements: Across Land, …
Dog's Best Friend?: Vivisecting The "Animal" In Mark Twain's "A Dog's Tale", Matthew Guzman
Dog's Best Friend?: Vivisecting The "Animal" In Mark Twain's "A Dog's Tale", Matthew Guzman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
“A Dog’s Tale” encapsulates the duality that the domesticated dog as both loyal “friend” and dependable scientific “instrument” denotes. Twain paints a dark portrait of man’s association with “beast.” Additionally, the story presents much more than a simple anthropomorphic tale. Although the nonhuman narrator has humanlike characteristics, one is always aware that Aileen Mavourneen is a dog. Nowhere is this divide more apparent than in the narrator’s failed attempts to “understand” the language and behavior of the human characters. The tale epitomizes the dogma of man’s rule over “lower” creatures, but it does not fully reaffirm these accepted beliefs. Rather, …