From Dog Alterity to Canine Sublime: A Cross-Century Reading of Victorian Fiction

Abstract

From Charles Dickens to Joseph Conrad dogs are omnipresent in Victorian novels. Many recent critical works have investigated the part they play, either within the confines of specific novels or against the enlarged context of Victorian culture. Reversing Monica Flegel’s stance in Pets and Domesticity in Victorian Literature and Culture. Animality, Queer Relations and the Victorian Family, in which pet animals are studied through their relationship with the family institution, this paper considers dogs through their radical otherness. It starts from the assumption that literature is where humans can encounter and confront the alterity of animal kind in ways that attempt to move beyond anthropomorphism/centrism. This reversal of perspective, whereby the animal is no longer seen as man’s adjunct, is all the more perplexing in the case of dogs, generally described through the tight bond they hold with their masters. This ethological enigmaticity, which baffles the limits of ontology, may be analysed through the notion of the sublime, i.e. as a random thing of spirit, or whatever is not amenable to reason and entails a sense of awe.

Keywords

• canine species
• alterity
• sublime
• Victorian novel