The Wild Animal’s Story: Nonhuman Protagonists in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature through the Lens of Practical Zoocriticism

Literature Review: Defining Animal(ity) Studies? 
Introducing 
Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader
(2009), Clifton Flynn observes that, until fairly recently, “scholars’ examinations 
of the social lives of human beings was limited only to interactions with other 
humans; our relationships with other animals had been almost completely 
ignored” (xiii). This emphasis on the social is apt, as the early beginnings of 
animal studies were driven (almost entirely) by the social sciences. In Kenneth 
Shapiro’s editorial introduction to the inaugural issue of 
Society & Animals
(1
993), he declared that the journal’s primary goal was to “foster within the 
social sciences a substantive subfield, animal studies, which will further the 
understanding of the human side of human/nonhuman animal interactions” (1). 
Anthropology, history, and philosophy were the first of the humanities to join the 
multidisciplinary endeavour. On the whole, the implicit anthropocentrism of 

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humanities subjects delayed major engagement for some time. Literary studies 
would be one of the last to contribute. Indeed, this was despite clear invitations 
to participate, as in Shapiro’s editorial: “more studies are needed in the area of 
animals in the popular culture, particularly of animals in literature” (2). Although 
the field of literary animal studies has grown considerably since then, broadly 
speaking, it continues to be a niche interest. Much like the traditional perception 
of animals in literature, literary animal studies is still seen by many as 
something of a novelty
—engaging, but perhaps not to be taken too seriously. 
One factor inadvertently sustaining this marginality is the multitude of 
approaches that have developed in response to animal studies. As yet, we 
remain unable to define literary animal studies, its purpose, or how it should be 
conducted. To borro
w Susan McHugh’s words from her article, “One or Several 
Literary Animal Studies,” we must ask: are there one or several ways of reading 
animals in literature (McHugh)? Whilst this has prevented organization and 
cohesion within literary animal studies, it does indicate the vitality and promising 
potential of such research: 
[T]he proliferation of methodological differences constitutes a 
considerable achievement in the development of this (sub)field, which 
until recently had been stymied by a largely tacit agreement to consider 
animals as irrelevant to literature and other traditionally ‘humanistic’ 
subjects. (
Ibid
) 
This diversity is characteristic of animal studies, as well as its various offshoots, 
which many believe should be celebrated. In his introduction to 
Animal 
Encounters
(2009), Tom Tyler describes animal studies as an “open, contested 
field, with no clear c
anon;” it is a “meeting point where different species of 
researcher gather,” and the resulting “varied, often conflicting approaches” 
should be considered a “strength rather than a weakness” (2). I agree that this 
is a distinctive strength of the field, although I would add that the potential 

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weakness becomes more apparent in the (sometimes heated) conflicts arising 
from the question of animal ethics. In such a varied, open, multidisciplinary 
space, it is not surprising that there is still no final agreemen
t on animal studies’ 
relationship with or duties towards real animals. 
The majority of animal studies work tends to suggest, at the very least, 
some form of allegiance to improving the welfare and ethical treatment of 
nonhuman beings. Within literary animal studies, however, the relationship 
between academia and advocacy seems more tenuous. The very nature of 
literary analysis seems to beg the question of whether it could 
ever
hope to 
have any bearing on animal welfare. Yet, some of the earliest and most 
important advocacy-oriented work in animal studies mirrored the methods of 
literary studies, by focusing both on language and the direct relationship 
between discourse and physical treatment. Cary Wolfe’s posthumanist 
deconstruction in