Look! A Squirrel! Animals Writing

Timothy C. Baker*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

The concluding chapter turns to children’s fiction to demonstrate that the complicated relationship between language, suffering, and intertextuality is central to contemporary literature, regardless of genre or audience. These texts present very different approaches to animal language. Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go highlights the way language can take on a material presence that changes the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals. The chapter then turns to Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, alongside work by Claire Barker, Emer Stamp, and Ursula Vernon, to show how the integration of visual media challenges the anthropocentric hierarchy of the written word. These texts suggest that as much as nonhuman animals are always mediated, humans, and human texts, are also similarly mediated.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWriting Animals
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages185-209
Number of pages25
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-030-03880-9
ISBN (Print)978-3-030-03879-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Publication series

NamePalgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
ISSN (Print)2634-6338
ISSN (Electronic)2634-6346

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright: © 2019, The Author(s).

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