Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/70465
Title: ‘We are all animals’ : posthumanism in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s travels’ and Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the looking-glass’
Authors: Portelli, Beatrice (2020)
Keywords: Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745. Gulliver's travels -- Criticism and interpretation
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898. Alice's adventures in Wonderland -- Criticism and interpretation
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898. Through the looking glass -- Criticism and interpretation
Children's stories, English
Fantasy fiction, English
Humanism in literature
Animals in literature
Characters and characteristics in literature
Issue Date: 2020
Citation: Portelli, B. (2020). ‘We are all animals’: posthumanism in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s travels’ and Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the looking-glass’ (Bachelor's dissertation).
Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to address the problem of how posthumanism in children’s literature have been neglected by critics and editors who sought to delimit the possibility of ‘otherness’ in the texts. This dissertation aims to discuss the ideas forwarded by Jacques Derrida’s animal based theoretical essays specially The Animal That Therefore I Am. Derrida starts with a dismantling of straightforward distinction between the human and the animal and he questions the hierarchical position of nature that afflicts the human-animal relationship. By concentrating on his own theory of animal-subjectivity and animal-gaze Derrida puts the homogenizing concept of animal into a big question. With this in mind, this thesis aims to develop some of the productive dimensions of posthumanism in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll by teasing out different narrative strategies employed in the texts such as size distortion, inversion of human and nonhuman traits, themes such prey and consumption as well as other points of commonality between humans and nonhumans. In doing so, this dissertation bridges the animal-human divide which was significant before the advent of posthumanism in the philosophical history of the ‘animal’.
Description: B.A.(HONS)ENGLISH
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/70465
Appears in Collections:Dissertations - FacArt - 2020
Dissertations - FacArtEng - 2020

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