1. Animals, Society and Culture
Lecture 12:
Anthropomorphism and animal tales

2. Lecture outline Anthropomorphism Children’s literature
Literature and campaigns against cruelty to animals

3. What is anthropomorphism?
Human shape
Gods
Animals
Unscientific

4. Making connections
Anthropomorphism derives from human capacity for ‘reflexive consciousness’
Makes possible the ‘incorporation of some animals into the human social milieu’ (Serpell, 2005:124).
Enables humans ‘to participate in nonhuman lives not just as observers but as active social partners…. [and] … to bridge the conceptual and moral gulf that separates humans from other animals’ (Serpell, 2005:132)

5. Types of anthropomorphism
Allegorical
Personification
Superficial
Explanatory
Applied
(Mullan and Marvin, 1999)

6. Controversial
anthropomorphism is very close to anthropocentrism – humans project own ways of behaving, thinking feeling because they see themselves as the centre of the universe (Tylor)
Can also be understood as the opposite – as emphasising continuity between humans and animals (Fudge)

7. Children’s literature

8. Civilising process Children closer to nature than are adults
The process of acculturation of children likened to the process of human development from ‘savage’ to ‘civilised’
Children are ‘like’ animals –this animality has to be controlled, tamed, repressed through process of acculturation

9. Children and animals Animals are as important as humans
Relationships with them significant
Know their likes and dislikes
See them as individuals
Embodiment and touch important aspect of communicating with animals
Social positioning similar

10. Fairy stories Civilising process Repression of animality
Taught about morality
Charles Perrault: ‘They all tend to reveal the advantage in being honest, patient, prudent, industrious, obedient’

11. Red Riding Hood

12. Original tale
In facing the werewolf and temporarily abandoning herself to him, the little girl sees the animal side of herself. She crosses the border between civilisation and wilderness, goes beyond the dividing line to face death in order to live. Her return home is a move forward as a whole person. She is a wo/man, self-aware, ready to integrate herself into society with awareness. (Zipes, 30)

13. Perrault’s tale
‘As every reader/viewer subconsciously knows, Little Red Riding Hood is not really sent into the woods to visit grandma but to meet the wolf and to explore her own sexual cravings and social rules of conduct. Therefore, the most significant encounter is with the wolf because it is here that she acts upon her desire to indulge in sexual intercourse with the wolf, and most illustrations imply that she willingly makes a bargain with the wolf, or, in male terms, ‘she asks to be raped’ (Zipes, p.239, Don’t Bet on the Prince)

15. Animal autobiographies
Develop an anti-cruelty message
Invite the reader to experience life from an animal’s perspective
Children are addressed by these books because
they’re seen as effective agents in promoting better treatment of animals
they can learn lessons in good behaviour from the behaviour of the animals and their owners

16. Slave narratives Same social positioning Autobiographical
Part of campaign to change the law
Testimonial as well as testimony
Subjectivity created for animal autobiographers often analogous to children, women, slaves, servants (Cosslett, 2006)

17. Realist element Class system
Morality tale – exemplar of good behaviour (both human and animal)
Respects human and animal hierarchies
Relates to treatment of horses in real world
Communication by touch and tone of voice

18. The jungle book

19. Anti-cruelty campaigns
Published in 1877
RSPCA endorsed several editions of the book
George Angell, founder of the American Humane Society, ‘issued free copies to American cabmen with the subtitle ‘The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Horse’ (Kean, 79).

20. Summary
Anthropomorphism enables emotional connection between humans and animals
Devalued in modernity because it’s associated with emotion rather than reason, women/femininity rather than men/rationality, children rather than adults, nature rather than culture
Important in children’s literature and in literature opposing cruelty to animals
Re-emergence of anthropomorphism at end of 20th beginning of 21st century is significant as it suggests change in how human-animal relations are understood/experienced – post-modernity

21. References used
Armstrong, P (2008) What animals mean in the fiction of modernity, Routledge
Cosslett, T (2006) Talking animals in British children’s fiction, , Ashgate
Crist, E (2000) Images of animals: anthropomorphism and animal mind, Temple University Press
DeMelo, M (2012) Animals and Society, Columbia University Press
Greene, A (2008) Horses at work, Harvard University Press
Keane, H (1998) Animal Rights, Reaktion
Mullan, B and Marvin, G (1999) Zoo Culture, Univ. of Illinois Press
Serpell, J (2005) ‘People in disguise: anthropomorphism and the human-pet relationship’ in Daston, L and Mitman, G (eds) Thinking with animals, Columbia University Press
Tipper, R (2011) ‘A dog who I know quite well’: everyday relationships between children and animals in Children’s Geographies, 9 (2):
Tyler, T (2003) ‘If horses had hands’ in Society and Animals, 11 (3)
Zipes, J (2006) Fairy tales and the art of subversion, 2nd edition, Routledge
Zipes, J (1986) Don’t bet on the prince, Gower