Date of Award
5-2020
Document Type
Thesis open access
Department
Environmental Science
First Advisor
Heather I. Sullivan
Second Advisor
Kathryn O'Rourke
Third Advisor
Gregory Hazelton
Abstract
Children’s literature often features anthropomorphized talking animal characters with individual lives and voices. This thesis clarifies the types of animal voices heard in children’s literature, utilizing a tripartite spectrum of expressions of animal emotions and perspectives, moralizing speech, and world building or plot progressing speech. This framework facilitates the exploration of the animal-human relationships and events of communication which shine through human-filtered animal voices. Using this framework, this thesis analyzes Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Doctor Dolittle and The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle, and C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Horse and His Boy. In these works of classic children’s literature, animal voices advocate for animal rights, affirm animal subjectivity, explore the imagined lives of animals, and explore the methods and benefits of communication between human and nonhuman animals.
Recommended Citation
Gekiere, Kathleen A., "From the Horse's Mouth: Voices of the Nonhuman in Classic Children's Literature" (2020). Environmental Studies Honors Theses. 1.
https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/env_honors/1
Creative Commons License
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