Canine Death in Canonical American Fiction (Ecocritical Theory and Practice)

This book investigates the death and suffering of domestic dogs that occurs on the peripheries of classic American novels and complicates the reductive and overly simplistic portrayal of these animals as “man's best friend.” These scenes are jarringly underrepresented in literary criticism yet overrepresented in well-read fiction. This book looks at the wealth of human-dog relations that the archive currently does not address by juxtaposing sentimental dog novels with a variety of other genres that include dogs more sparingly. The author explores masculine and feminine coming-of-age narratives as well as naturalist and postmodern novels. The work reads texts and other forms of media through the prism of animal studies, critical race theory, gender studies, and ecocriticism in conversation with more customary literary emphases on genre, motif, focalization, and symbolism to investigate the pattern of literary reliance on dogs as both outlets and scapegoats for human violence. The arguments challenge the forced and increasing dependence of canines on humans as well as the inevitability of their sacrifice in the construction of narratives.