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Literary Criticism General

Animal Victims in Modern Fiction

From Sanctity to Sacrifice

by (author) Marian Scholtmeijer

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 1993
Category
General, General, General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487576349
    Publish Date
    Dec 1993
    List Price
    $49.95

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Description

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.

About the author

MARIAN SCHOLTMEIJER has taught English at Simon Fraser University and Mount Allison Unviersity.

Marian Scholtmeijer's profile page