ANIMALS AND NATION IN THE FICTION OF EDGAR ALLAN POE AND MARÍA AMPARO RUIZ DE BURTON

Abstract

“Animals and Nation in the Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton” brings together two writers from either side of the antebellum and postbellum divide who have not before been put into conversation and whose innovative literary representations of animals have consistently been overlooked. They develop congruent critiques of the US nation through attentive fictional depictions of animals as beings with independent agency and perspective. In fresh readings of texts familiar and unfamiliar, the dissertation explores how Poe and Ruiz de Burton question human assumptions about the natural world and challenge US nationalism in the midst of its formation. In so doing, the dissertation also brings together the fields of Hemispheric American Studies and Animal Studies, the latter of which has so far been brought to bear on nineteenth-century US-American literature in only a few studies. The dissertation also articulates a theory of animal fictionality, incorporating the ethological principle of critical anthropomorphism into strategies of close reading. Poe’s sketch “Instinct vs Reason—A Black Cat” serves to frame narratives by Poe that dispute unwarranted human claims to dominance over the non-human world and that reveal nation itself as a disputable category. In “The Black Cat,” a feline calls a human to judgment for his murderous arrogance. In “The Raven,” a corvid appropriates human language to subvert the speaker’s poetic voice. In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a strange animal world exceeds the boundaries of the nation, and the “shrieks” and “screams” of animals call race into question. Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought It? grants interiority to animals, complementing Poe’s representations of animal agency and perspective. The novel’s animals have a remarkable capacity for sympathy, but they have a critical gaze, too. Constrained by neither national nor sectional commitments, they see the Civil War as a debacle. Ruiz de Burton’s evaluation of the war through animal eyes prompts speculation about Poe’s attitudes regarding historical events he never saw, suggesting an alternative interpretation of US literary history and confirming this unlikely pair of authors as a compelling canon of two.