Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 The Necessity of an Anthropomorphic Approach to Children’s Literature
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The study focuses on the necessity of an anthropomorphic approach in deconstructing the symbolic understandings of animals in children’s literature, and considers how such an approach can be used to draw ethical attention to the unnatural history of animals in the Anthropocene. The paper analyses three children’s novels that depict animals without representing their subjectivity in characteristically human terms. These novels are Eva Hornung’s ferality tale Dog Boy (2009), Sonya Hartnett’s fable The Midnight Zoo (2011) and Kate Applegate’s animal autobiography The One and Only Ivan (2012). Informed by Jacques Derrida’s anti-anthropocentric views and the ethical discourse of creaturely vulnerability, this essay argues that the world’s present state of cascading environmental impoverishment demands an anthropomorphic approach that is not inherently anthropocentric, along with an emerging kind of creaturely consciousness.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 9 Feb 2022 12:41:31
183-199 The Necessity of an Anthropomorphic Approach to Children’s Literaturesmall AustLit logo Children's Literature in Education
Subjects:
  • Dog Boy Eva Hornung , 2009 single work novel
  • The Midnight Zoo Sonya Hartnett , 2010 single work children's fiction
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