AustLit

'In Ceridwen Dovey’s short story cycle, Only the Animals, inter-textual allusions to established fictional animals are imposed onto settings of human conflict and ventriloquised through diverse animal subjects. This paper defends narrating from a non-human animal perspective, not as a radical act, but as a move to reinvigorate our conceptions of human-animal relations. Meaningful encounters between human and non-human animals are presented with a recognition of the impossibility of full and mutual inter-species understanding. The juxtaposition of the limits of figuring literary animals with human/animal intimacy and incomprehension marks Dovey’s work as a logical progression of some ideas presented in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello. This paper reads Dovey’s deployment of textual self-referentiality and overt intersection with Coetzee’s work in Only the Animals as a reflexive writing form that works to critique another representational dispossession: that of anthropocentric realism. Both works understand that humans do not share language with non-human animals but we often meet questions of the animal through stories. This makes the stories we tell highly significant; indeed – vital – components of the cultural landscape.'

Source: Abstract.

'Coleridge wrote that ‘Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.’ In his epic, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ published in 1798, the albatross is an uncertain presence, neither its species or colour is specified. It displays affection, presaging hope, guiding the ship and accompanying its crew for ‘food or play.’ But once the mariner randomly shoots the bird, the albatross becomes a burden, morphing into a symbol of atonement. Unnaturally slung from the mariner’s neck it crosses a boundary between the physical and moral world. The mariner endures seven days without rain or wind, suffering fever, hallucinations, the death of his crew and shipwreck. Native to the south polar seas, albatrosses were rarely sighted by European sailors, an early source being Cook’s voyages. There is overall agreement that Coleridge’s source was George Shelvocke’s account of a black albatross, also known as ‘sooty albatross’ or ‘quakerbird’, which he encountered during his round the world voyage, 1719-22. The bird was shot by the second captain because it was considered an ill-omen when the winds were unfavourable. Certainly, the albatross is othered in the poem, not merely by the laws of hospitality but by its uncharacteristic depiction and by the mythical, male-centred language that Coleridge used.'  (Introduction)