Animal Victims in Modern Fiction

From Sanctity to Sacrifice

Bibliographic Data

ID19934993
AuthorsMarian Scholtmeijer (corresponding author)
Year1993
Publication date1993-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueAnimal Victims in Modern Fiction (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press (PUBLISHER • CA)
DOI10.3138/9781487576349
OpenAlexW2084079777
Open LibraryOL35847729M
ISBN9781487576349
LanguageEN
Citations received14

The Darwinian revolution profoundly altered society's conception of animals. Marian Scholtmeijer explores the ways in which modern literature has reflected this change in its attempts to deal with the reality of the autonomous animal and the animal victim. Scholtmeijer considers works of fiction dealing with animal victims in the wild and in urban settings, how they are used to represent human sexual dilemmas, and how the hopes and disillusionments invested in myth generate animal victims. A broad range of authors is represented: Jack London, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Frederick Philip Grove, Mary Webb, Gustave Flaubert, Timothy Findley, John Steinbeck D.H. Lawrence, Jerzy Kosinski, Stephen King, and many others. Her analysis suggests that the issue of the victimization of animals is much more tangled than we might like to believe. Scholtmeijer finds that animals resist assimilation into cultural products, and that, regarded with due attention, they possess a certain power over the themes and narratives that contain them

Aesthetics · Art · Environmental ethics · Literature · Sacrifice · Theology · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Philosophy