The Wolf at the Door and the Dog at Our Feet

Abstract

Abstract Over millennia, faithful devotion to humans and our homes has become central to the identity we have constructed for dogs. Wolves, on the other hand, have been constructed in opposition to dogs, and they have come to represent all that is not home. In this essay I consider representations of wolves, dogs, and the home from antiquity to the present in secular and sacred sources. Using the lens of cultural studies, this comparative essay explores how our ideas about canids and the home were established and why they have been so remarkably persistent.