Durham E-Theses Deconstructing Anthropomorphism: The Humanimal Narratives of Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, and Richard Adams LEATHERLAND, DOUGLAS,PETER How to cite: LEATHERLAND, DOUGLAS,PETER (2019) Deconstructing Anthropomorphism: The Humanimal Narratives of Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, and Richard Adams, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12978/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Deconstructing Anthropomorphism: The “Humanimal” Narratives of Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, and Richard Adams Douglas Peter Leatherland Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Studies Durham University 2018 [1] [2] Deconstructing Anthropomorphism: The “Humanimal” Narratives of Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, and Richard Adams Douglas Peter Leatherland Abstract This thesis proposes that popular narratives categorized as children’s animal stories – Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), Beatrix Potter’s tales (1902-30), and Richard Adams’ Watership Down (1972) – feature characters which are rendered anthropomorphic in a diversity of overlapping and contradictory ways. Each of these narratives draws on a complex and varied tradition of anthropomorphic animals in literature. Due to their popularity, they have received various critical responses which pose different meanings implied by the author’s use of anthropomorphic tropes. My study aims to amalgamate these readings into a meta-critical analysis of the anthropomorphisms in the work of the three authors. Beginning with a historical overview of anthropomorphism across the disciplines and the key debates surrounding this supposedly fixed concept, this study questions the implications made about the human condition which are inherent in assumptions that a text is representing a character in an anthropomorphic way. To be anthropomorphic, such modes of representation must necessarily attribute features which are exclusively human, but even when we deconstruct previously held assumptions of anthropomorphism in the work of popular writers of animal stories, we find that what does or does not constitute anthropomorphism is a multifarious and complex issue. While at times the anthropomorphisms in these narratives are explicit and draw on popular elements of fable and fantasy, at other times they merge with more naturalistic representations. The figure of the “humanimal”, which constitutes a neither/both structure of relation between the human and the animal, emerges as the most relevant figure as we follow the trajectories of anthropomorphic tropes in the narratives of Grahame, Potter and Adams. While the humanimal figure is often identified in the animal narratives of authors such as Franz Kafka, I propose that by deconstructing anthropomorphic tropes, popular “children’s” animal stories may also be considered humanimal narratives. [3] [4] Contents Acknowledgements 9 Introduction: Anthropomorphism and the “Humanimal” 11 Chapter 1 Anthropomorphism: A Historical Overview 18 What Is Anthropomorphism? 18 Anthropomorphism vs. Anthropodenial 23 Ancient and Medieval Representations of Animals 26 Animal Taxonomies 33 The Cartesian Beast-Machine 37 Anthropomorphism in the Cognitive Sciences 39 Posthumanist Perspectives 44 Conclusion 47 Chapter 2 Narrating the (Non)Human: Anthropomorphism as a Literary Device 49 Fabular and Allegorical Animals 52 Sentimental Animals and Children’s Literature 60 Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Animal Characters 62 Franz Kafka’s ‘Investigations of a Dog’ 69 Conclusion 75 Chapter 3 The Plurality of Anthropomorphism: Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows 76 Grahame’s Earlier Work 78 A Concept of the Animal 82 The Implied Reader 87 Species and Social Class 92 Animals in Clothing 98 The Illustrators 103 The Animal Appetite 107 Grahame’s Representation of Pan 110 Rewrites of the Text 113 (i) Class Conflict and Jan Needle’s Wild Wood 114 (ii) William Horwood’s Tales of the Willows 118 (iii) From Arcadia to Dystopia: The Wind in the Pylons 120 Conclusion 125 Chapter 4 Anthropomorphism and the Double Perspective: The Tales of Beatrix Potter 127 Narrative and Natural History 131 The Theriomorphic Subtext 135 Potter’s ‘Animal-Children’ 141 The Costume of Potter’s Animals 144 [5] Food and Consumption 154 Animal Speech and Communication 156 Potter’s Use of Violence 160 Conclusion 164 Chapter 5 Anthropomorphism Reconsidered: The Rabbit “Humanimals” of Richard Adams’ Watership Down 166 Introduction: What Sort of a Novel is Watership Down? 166 Watership Down as an Animal Epic 173 Fantastic Narrative Elements 178 Mythology and the Supernatural 181 Fiver as Rabbit Shaman 185 Primitivism and Orality 188 Lapine and Other Languages 197 Rabbits Are So Human 203 The Rabbits’ Lifeworld and Natural History 208 Death, Violence and Sexuality 214 Post-Lagomorphs 220 Conclusion 222 Conclusion 224 Works Cited 228 [6] The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. [7] [8] Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professor Timothy Clark for his constant support and guidance during his supervision of this project. I am also very grateful to Professor David Herman for his supervision in the earlier stages of the thesis. Acknowledgements are also due to my family, all of whom have shown immense support and encouragement throughout my time at Durham University. [9] [10] Introduction: Anthropomorphism and the “Humanimal” In Animal Land: The Creatures of Children’s Fiction (1974), Margaret Blount categorised children’s animal stories according to ‘three distinct types of writer’: …first, the sort of writer who cannot help writing about animals – they are his first love and find their way into his work whether he will or no; besides Jack London, C.S. Lewis or Alison Uttley, there are the great naturalists Ernest Thompson Seton, H. Mortimer Batten, J.W. Fortescue or Denys Watkins Pitchford. The second kind of temperament tends to dislike, or be critical of, the human race and finds animals a more innocent, congenial alternative with which to populate the earth, and includes Swift, T.H. White or Beatrix Potter. The third category […] is concerned, consciously or unconsciously, with teaching us something. The moral urge is very strong – not in the folklore animal stories, but in the early animal tales of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; however, more twentieth-century writers belong to the group than one might think. There are High Lofting, Paul Gallico, Beverley Nichols, and C.S. Lewis once more, and all these numerous creators who start by dressing animals and giving them human voices end up by saying more than intended – anthropomorphism has unexpected results. Animals are beautiful, innocent, funny and strange, and their built-in appeal can be used as a half-way stage towards comment on the human race. One can do this, as perhaps Kenneth Grahame did, without realising it.1 The three texts I have chosen to discuss – Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), Beatrix Potter’s tales (1902-30), and Richard Adams’ Watership Down (1972) – are widely considered to be great works of anthropomorphic children’s literature. They are amongst the most recognised and popular texts of the very specific, albeit ambiguously defined genre, of the children’s animal story. The popularity of these texts has also invited diverse critical responses, and thus the ways in which anthropomorphism has been read, conceived or evaded in readings of each text can be seen in their various manifestations. This thesis proposes that the labels of ‘anthropomorphic’ and ‘children’s literature’ become more ambivalent as we progress through the twentieth century. Blount’s claim that children’s animal stories can be neatly categorised as above, although helpful in thinking about the differences between two more diverse but contemporaneous writers such as, for example, Jack London and Beatrix Potter, does not acknowledge the plurality of genres and modes of writing that often converge in animal narratives. As we shall see, each of the texts I shall be discussing feature elements of natural history writing, animal fable, allegory, nonsense literature, beast-epic and papillonades, to name just a few that immediately spring to mind. This plurality also means that the boundary between what we consider to be either explicit or implicit anthropomorphic techniques becomes blurred, and fluctuates according to the multiple conceptions of the human-animal relationship which are conveyed or assumed in each text. As Blount states, ‘anthropomorphism has unexpected results’. Throughout this 1 Margaret Blount, Animal Land: The Creatures of Children’s Fiction (London: