To Read or Not to Eat: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Books

IF 0.6 4区农林科学 Q4 SOCIOLOGY

Society & Animals Pub Date : 2021-07-07 DOI:10.1163/15685306-BJA10045

Anastassiya Andrianova

引用次数: 2

Abstract

Anthropomorphic nonhuman animals figure prominently in children’s literature, teaching young readers relevant life lessons and adding variety, humor, and emotional distance to safely consider otherwise traumatizing ideas. Despite its educational and developmental value, however, using animal characters to tell human stories normalizes the very same mechanisms that adult humans use to subjugate real animals. Bringing animal-studies insights to bear on children’s literature and development, this article critiques the use of anthropomorphism in children’s books and urges that, short of the unrealistic demand to abandon the animal as metaphor, young readers and their adult mentors reread children’s books critically and discuss ways of making animals matter. The article examines the debate about anthropomorphism in science and its application to childhood development. It then turns to the pros and cons of anthropomorphizing animals in children’s books and discusses specific examples of books featuring anthropomorphic animal characters.

查看原文本刊更多论文

读还是不吃:儿童书籍中的拟人论

拟人化的非人类动物在儿童文学中占有重要地位，教给年轻读者相关的生活经验，并增加了多样性、幽默和情感距离，以安全地考虑否则会造成创伤的想法。然而，尽管具有教育和发展价值，但用动物角色来讲述人类故事使成年人用来征服真实动物的机制正常化。本文将动物研究的见解带入儿童文学和发展，批评儿童书籍中拟人化的使用，并敦促年轻读者和他们的成人导师，在不现实地要求放弃动物作为隐喻的情况下，批判性地重新阅读儿童书籍，讨论使动物变得重要的方法。本文探讨了科学中关于拟人论的争论及其在儿童发展中的应用。然后讨论了在儿童书籍中拟人化动物的利弊，并讨论了拟人化动物角色的具体例子。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Society & Animals 社会科学-兽医学

CiteScore

1.40

自引率

12.50%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： Society & Animals publishes studies that describe and analyze our experiences of non-human animals from the perspective of various disciplines within both the Social Sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science) and the Humanities (e.g., history, literary criticism). The journal specifically deals with subjects such as human-animal interactions in various settings (animal cruelty, the therapeutic uses of animals), the applied uses of animals (research, education, medicine and agriculture), the use of animals in popular culture (e.g. dog-fighting, circus, animal companion, animal research), attitudes toward animals as affected by different socializing agencies and strategies, representations of animals in literature, the history of the domestication of animals, the politics of animal welfare, and the constitution of the animal rights movement.