Affection, Literature, and Animal Ideation

Abstract

Representation of non human animals in literature is an artistic endeavour that entails a highly aesthetical and ethical complexity. On the one hand, it requieres an exhaustive work on the rethoric and poetic sources of language and literature to giving an account of those who have no possibility of linguistic communication. On the other hand, the literary estrategies chosen for the representation of animals show specific ways of feeling and understanding not only non human animals and their environments, but also the place and role of humankind in the world and its creatures. This connection between feelings, literary forms and cosmovisions and ideologies is the key to exploring Spanish thinking about animals in a variety of literary samples from the Middle Ages to the present time