engleski

Human and animal identity in Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy

In one of the fantastic worlds devised by Philip Pullman in his trilogy, human characters appear in the company of the daemon, animal-shaped part of their being. Animal characters, on the contrary, do not have their daemon, and some of them crave for one in order to humanize themselves, i.e. to acquire a higher rank in the hierarchy of beings. It thus appears that the narrative adopts contradictory representational strategies with respect to animal: it seems to open a gap between human and animal on one side, and on the other it depicts human as deeply interwoven with the animal. Moreover, the dialectics of this human-animal relationship in the daemon bond undermine the traditional divide between the alleged human rationality and animal instincts.

human-animal identity; animal studies; Philip Pullman

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