Animals and the Exotic in Literature
Session Coordinator: Stacy Hoult
Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Valparaiso University
Meier 107, 1800 Chapel Dr., Valparaiso, IN 46383
Stacy.Hoult@valpo.edu

Session A

King of the Beasts: The Lion as Fable, Myth, and Emblem in Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature

After tracing the literary origins of the figure of the lion in such varied sources as classical fables, medieval bestiaries, and Hispano-Arabic tales, I focus particularly on a few Spanish medieval literary works: the lion's episode in the Poema de mio Cid; a few of the "enxemplos" from Don Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor; and one poetic fable from Juan Ruiz' Libro de buen amor. In these works, I examine the figure of the lion in terms of its anthropomorphization and animal subjectivity (indeed a literary precursor to the development of human characters in novelistic prose). Furthermore, I explore to what extent the figure of the lion not only embodies a sense of national history (if not outright patriotic pride and glory), but also emblematizes the power politics as well as the social and racial interactions -- encounters, confrontations, and coexistence -- among the three religions in the Iberian Peninsula. I end my paper with the fictionalized and novelistic anecdote of "Andronicus and the lion," which is framed within Fray Antonio de Guevara's epistolary collection, Epístolas familiares (1539). In this exotically fantastic and quite literary short story, Guevara imbues the narrative with a pseudo-autobiographical perspective that already preludes the picaresque novel.

Horacio Chiong Rivero
Swarthmore College
hchiong@earthlink.net

Lions in Medieval Europe: Cavorting Greyhounds and People with Fur

The medieval Welsh tale, “The Lady of the Fountain”, and Chretien de Troyes’ French counterpart, “The Knight with the Lion”, both employ lions as aids to their heroes. Both lions may be read as symbolic of berserker tendencies in the knights they fight alongside of, but the authors’ characterizations of the lions differ dramatically. The anonymous Welsh writer of “The Lady of the Fountain” portrays his lion as a simple, very loyal animal. Chretien de Troyes portrays his lion as more of a furry person that both exemplifies and breaks the laws of chivalry. Both authors take advantage of the exotic nature of lions to medieval Europe. They assign to lions the characteristics that best fit their needs, knowing that their audiences will have had no direct experience with big cats to compare their characters to. In their roles as protectors, both lions are loyal and deadly. The Welsh poet’s depiction is more realistic while Chretien’s lion displays complex emotions. (In fact, the word “maudlin” comes to mind.)

Megan Moser
University of Texas at Dallas
Mgmoser@yahoo.com

Reading Richard Parker: Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Human/Animal Relations

In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, about a shipwrecked boy's survival on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger, Martel describes several encounters between Pi and animals, including those in the zoo his family ran in India, those he travels with on the lifeboat (at first including a hyena, a zebra, and an orangutan, alongside the tiger), those he kills for food, and those he merely watches from his boat; however, the central animal of the novel is Richard Parker, Pi's tiger boatmate, and it is here that Martel most directly engages with conceptions of what a relationship between man and beast should be. Although Richard Parker is acknowledged to be a very dangerous creature, Pi's experience still provides a sense of connection with the animal world in several ways, including their being literally 'in the same boat" and the great sense of respect and even love that Pi feels for Richard Parker as well as for most creatures he encounters. Life of Pi is an important text about human/animal relations because it refuses a simplistic attitude: animals are not either anthropomorphized, lovable creatures or monstrous, dangerous beasts; instead, animals are both closely related to and far removed from humanity.

Christy Tidwell
University of Texas at Arlington
Tidwellc@excite.com

Session B

Where the Wild Things Are: Endangered Species and the Creation of the (Animal) Other in Children’s Literature

Endangered species are almost fetishized in children’s literature, where an emphasis on the beauty and uniqueness of exotic animals is tempered by a distinctly human tendency to objectify such beings as tools for human pleasure (be it scientific or aesthetic). An examination of exotic animals as portrayed in children’s literature offers a means of getting to the heart of the social construction of the animal-human species divide as articulated in Cary Wolfe’s Animal Rites. Cultural forces largely determine the attitudes we have toward animals, and children’s literature begins to work on us from a very young age, in many cases before we can even read independently. In this paper I aim to show what lessons children learn about exotic animals when they read age-appropriate literature. These ‘lessons’ include learning to make false and misleading distinctions between humans and animals, perpetuate cultural myths about the internal and external lives of animals, and deny the possibility that even exotic animals deserve to be subjects of their own lives rather than objects of human desire. I will also connect childhood experiences of exotic animals in literature to the adult desire to possess, overcome, and cage wildness not only in animals but in exotic people as well.

Amy L. Hayden
University of Illinois at Chicago
Ahayde1@uic.edu

The Fantastic Creatures of Lydia Cabrera's Cuentos negros (1936)

This study presents key aspects of Lydia Cabrera's (Cuba, 1900-1991) Cuentos negros (1936). While highlighting some of the political and other social realities out of which they were transmitted to the author via her informants of African descent, the essay offers a close examination of the personification of animals (deer, dog, cat, turtle, tiger, etc.) and organic entities as they serve to de-familiarize the quotidian elements of Cuban society at turn of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Cuba. Lydia Cabrera's technique of interviewing and interacting with her informants, in large part attributed to the style and influence of her famous brother-in-law, Fernando Ortiz, serves as a model of creation that would mark her later productions. The Cuentos, part myth, oral tradition, legend, folklore, offer insight into the past and present of Cuban reality as they were told and recounted numerous times before finding their way in a transformed fashion into the pages of the anthology that Cabrera would write to help Teresa de la Parra pass the time during her period of convalescence in Europe.

Esther M. Santana
Northeastern Illinois University
e-santana@neiu.edu

Resonant Snails and Salamander Demiurges: Creepy Crawlies in the Poetry of León de Greiff

Nonhuman creatures play a multitude of roles in the exotic and fantastic poetic universe created by Colombia's León de Greiff (1895-1976). The poetic voice variously characterizes himself as an owl, lion or mysterious unspecified beast, while the seductive qualities of female poetic objects are highlighted through their identification with cats, gazelles and poisonous snakes. More challenging, however, are the often contradictory references to animals that contribute to the development of the key themes of fantasy and escape from mundane reality. Creatures as diverse as bats, frogs, toads, snails and salamanders are indispensable to the construction of an alternative realm in which the poetic "I" may experience total imaginative and creative freedom. This paper analyzes the relationship between animals and the exotic as it relates to the creation of a unique poetic voice, a series of complex love relationships, and the portrayal of elements such as the night, the sea and music as antidotes to the tedious everyday life from which the poetic subject strives to break free. It will be shown that the subject's portrayals of himself as "hunter" and "paleontologist" apply equally to a poet intent on seeing his longing for freedom reflected in the whole of creation.

Stacy Hoult
Valparaiso University
Stacy.Hoult@valpo.edu