American prose literature

The following dissertation examines the philosophy of the animal as it appears in twentieth-century British and American literature. I argue that evolutionary theory, along with the Romantic emphasis on sympathy, creates an historical shift in our perception of humans and nonhumans. Beginning with Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby-Dick, the whale represents what I call a transitional animal figure in that the whale not only shows the traditionally symbolic literary animal but also the beginnings of the twentieth century shift toward the literal animal-as-subject. My proposed comparative analysis consists of a return to classic existential and phenomenological philosophers with animal studies in mind. A handful of critical essays in recent years have conducted just such an analysis. My contribution extends these philosophical endeavors on the animal and applies them to major literary authors who demonstrate a notable interest in the philosophy of animals. The first chapter of the dissertation begins with D.H. Lawrence, whose writings in selected essays, St. Mawr, and "The Fox" continue considerations made by Melville concerning animal being. Because Lawrence often focuses on gender, sexuality, and intuition, I discuss how a Heideggerian reading of animals in Lawrence adds value to interpretations of his fiction which remain unavailable in analyses of human subjects. In Chapter Two, I move on to William Faulkner's classic hunting tale of "The Bear" and other significant animal sightings in his fiction and nonfiction. For Faulkner, the animal subject exists in the author's particular historical climate of American environmentalism, modernism's literary emphasis on visuality, and race theory.

In the American creative nonfiction genre, the line between fact and fiction is ever-blurring. Two novels which strive for realness and are thematically related in their focus on a cause célèbre and the death penalty, Truman Capote's In cold blood and Norman Mailer's The executioner's song, offer clues that might help approach the question of what makes a specific work fall under the category of creative nonfiction. I analyze the creative techniques that the authors use in their novels, and I consider details from the texts about the activeness and reliability of the narrators in the two books, as well as consequent political implications. Additionally, I ground my examination of these novels in a discussion of the progress from the early novel's drive for realism to twentieth-century literary journalism.