Animals in Literary Education: Towards Multispecies Empathy

This book examines the complicated place of animals in literary analysis and education and shows how an ethically engaged approach to animals’ representation could be pursued to challenge anthropocentrism and cultivate multispecies empathy. Other species are represented in the literary education canon, including farmed animals. Yet the animals are typically anthropomorphized to guide students toward humanist readings and away from consideration of animals’ experiences or subjectivities. This reproduces the idea that animals are mere objects meant to be exploited for human purposes, even metaphorical and educational ones. John Drew develops the term “anthropo-allegory” to capture and critique the process through which students are taught to read animal literary representations exclusively as symbolic analogues for humans and human themes. The concept serves as an analytical lens for critically interrogating significant texts taught across educational levels and exposing the deeply engrained educational anthropocentrism that silences animal issues, even when animals are represented. Crucially, Drew identifies texts and pedagogical strategies that can help cultivate a literary educational animal ethic that simultaneously encourages analytical rigour and multispecies concern.