Animals in Allegory

Abstract

This chapter examines the complexity of animals in texts that have traditionally been read as allegories about human affairs (e.g. the Aesopian beast fable and Orwell’s Animal Farm). I argue that what might seem like a simple allegorical formula of animals standing in for humans is complicated by the fact that humans are themselves animals and are often wilfully blind about this fact. I survey examples from Aesop, Chaucer, Dryden, Coleridge, Melville, Orwell, and others. I find that allegory is a choice made by both author and reader, a means by which we explore our own animality and allow animals to enter the literary realm.