Definitions of the human have always been fluid and ideologically inflected, and so anthropomorphism as a literary device is especially dependent on historical context. In particular, knowledge of historical context can help us recognize when a literary text seeks to call attention to the plight of marginalized figures at a particular historical moment. Choose one text from your list and explore how it interrogates its own contemporary culture’s definition of the human through the trope of anthropomorphism so as to urge its contemporary readers to have a more expansive sense of solidarity and belonging. How does your text (please choose 1 of the following below) reconfigure historically specific forms of representation to illuminate the situation of marginalized figures? How does it harness the aesthetic possibilities of anthropomorphism to try to extend rights to disenfranchised figures?
This is an essay, there is no need for works cited sheet or direct quotes (but can add a quote if it brings meaningful value to the essay). Please make sure to answer all the questions as thoroughly as possible and as best as you can. (Zero in on question and avoid repetition and unnecessary wording). The theme we focused on this semester was the use of anthropomorphism in literary works. Must be answered in 4 pages.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
•Colonialism and early capitalism…European domination
•Inequality/ human overindulgence/ bad social organization
•Wars of religion, and all wars
•Enlightenment “rationality” vs. “irrationality” and how to respond to that
•Discovery/ exploration/ the capacity of the new world to change the way we think about the old world, etc.
•“English pride” and its follies…Bad land management/ animal management
Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
• Reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 which then transitions into the Stalinist Era of the Soviet Union
• Orwell writes this as a way to critique the issues or political threats of dystopias
• Response to his experience in Europe after the Second World War
• Propaganda, the possibility of a Soviet occupied country
• Propaganda, discouraging socialist affiliations
