| Summary: | This thesis considers the roles of Snooks the cat, Bow-wow the mastiff, Silver Blaze the thoroughbred, Dryad the Newfoundland, Tanganrog the wolf, Hushwing the owl, Redruff the partridge, and Bella the parrot – all creations of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, C. L. Pirkis, L.T. Meade, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton, and Margaret Marshall Saunders. Who are these creatures– and are they characters? The thesis takes as its starting point character studies in the humanist literary critical tradition in order to propose a new approach for reading animals in novels and short stories. The nineteenth century saw a rise in fiction writing and a proliferation of genres, many of which demonstrate a preoccupation with representing human psychology and interiority and a concomitant engagement with realism. At the same time, this period experienced an increasing number of discourses in science, politics, law, economics, and culture that viewed animals as “fellow-creatures” worthy of consideration. Methodologically, this thesis thus intervenes in, and moves freely between, two critical fields, animal studies and narrative theory, to provide a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding where “the animal” fits within theories of narrative. This thesis also expands the canon of Victorian literature itself by placing three prominent Canadian writers in conversation with their better-known British contemporaries to recover and revitalise the significance of the transatlantic nature of these debates about animal life. In this way, it offers new readings of canonical texts and illuminates minor works by major authors, largely forgotten bestsellers, Anglophone fiction from the country now called Canada, and the short story form. Its diverse corpus in turn provides the works under discussion with renewed critical attention. In addition to its literary close readings, this thesis draws upon scientific and medical writings and legal treatises in addressing a wide range of archival materials ...
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