“I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy

Stomping, crawling, buzzing, waddling through her works, animals are Laura E. Richards’s (1850–1943) main narrative fare, especially in her early works. For the most part figurations of humans and human affairs, Richards’s literary animals uphold the human-animal divide, abounding in anthropomorphis...

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Main Author: Verena Laschinger
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: European Association for American Studies 2024-12-01
Series:European Journal of American Studies
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/22859
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author Verena Laschinger
author_facet Verena Laschinger
author_sort Verena Laschinger
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description Stomping, crawling, buzzing, waddling through her works, animals are Laura E. Richards’s (1850–1943) main narrative fare, especially in her early works. For the most part figurations of humans and human affairs, Richards’s literary animals uphold the human-animal divide, abounding in anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, and speciesism. Richards’s nonsense poem “Eletelephony” (1932), however, dynamically entangles the human, the animal, and the machine, pronouncing “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” decades before Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (8). A first scholarly engagement with Richards’s modernist experimenting, the essay reads “Eletelephony” as an imagetext in tandem with Marguerite Davis’s original illustration, linking the nonsense poem to the animated cartoon.
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spelling doaj-art-9ebaa5ae2c8d4cd0a82e88d31dafd9382025-01-06T09:11:17ZengEuropean Association for American StudiesEuropean Journal of American Studies1991-93362024-12-0119410.4000/12wau“I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of AnimacyVerena LaschingerStomping, crawling, buzzing, waddling through her works, animals are Laura E. Richards’s (1850–1943) main narrative fare, especially in her early works. For the most part figurations of humans and human affairs, Richards’s literary animals uphold the human-animal divide, abounding in anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, and speciesism. Richards’s nonsense poem “Eletelephony” (1932), however, dynamically entangles the human, the animal, and the machine, pronouncing “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” decades before Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (8). A first scholarly engagement with Richards’s modernist experimenting, the essay reads “Eletelephony” as an imagetext in tandem with Marguerite Davis’s original illustration, linking the nonsense poem to the animated cartoon.https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/22859“Eletelephony” Laura E. Richardsnonsense poetryimagetextliterary animal studiesanimated cartoon
spellingShingle Verena Laschinger
“I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
European Journal of American Studies
“Eletelephony
” Laura E. Richards
nonsense poetry
imagetext
literary animal studies
animated cartoon
title “I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
title_full “I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
title_fullStr “I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
title_full_unstemmed “I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
title_short “I knew a dog once—”: Laura Richards’s Literary Animals and the Poetics of Animacy
title_sort i knew a dog once laura richards s literary animals and the poetics of animacy
topic “Eletelephony
” Laura E. Richards
nonsense poetry
imagetext
literary animal studies
animated cartoon
url https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/22859
work_keys_str_mv AT verenalaschinger iknewadogoncelaurarichardssliteraryanimalsandthepoeticsofanimacy