Cirrus@Austlit

Coetzee's fiction 'calls into question [the] longstanding cultural assumption of human superiority [over animals]. His novels Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello, in particular, foreground philosophical arguments about animals. ... This essay will not address these philosophical questions directly, although the suggestion that animals present a challenge to the assumption of human superiority is implicit in some of its arguments. Its focus is the rhetorical and symbolic function of animals in Coetzee's fiction.' (61)

This article focuses on the debate about the culling of elephants in South Africa and includes, as a literary example, the discussion of Mateer's poem.