Talking Animals and the Politics of World Literature

Catalog description

We have encountered talking animals within literature for over four thousand years. Alongside the Fables of Aesop, there are comparable animal stories from Ancient Babylon, Egypt, and from the Indian-Arabian-Persian cultural space, whose distribution was just as far-reaching. Animal fables appear easy to understand and universally valid. But do we really understand what it means when animals talk in texts? This course will employ current approaches to human-animal-studies alongside concepts of world literature to examine why animals are made to talk, what functions animal stories have, and what the conditions for their dissemination are. [In English; all Brown students welcome.]