Animal Abilities

Elizabeth Bowen

Disability and animality have frequently been conjoined in American literature as the limit cases of cognition, language, and narrative. In modern and contemporary fiction, this intersection is not just thematic, but also an opportunity for formal experimentation. My dissertation considers a century-spanning group of authors that includes William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and contemporary disabled writers and artists such as Jillian Weise, Kathy High, and Sharona Franklin. It uses a combination of close reading, historical research, and theoretical analysis to argue that some of the last century’s most influential literary experiments have built upon aesthetic modes associated with both disability and animality. For instance, in The Sound and the Fury, Benjy Compson’s famously associative narration is driven as much by canine-identified sensory tendencies of smell...