Mark Twain’s Late Animal Tales: Sentimental Anthropomorphism as Anthropocene Critique

Abstract

This article rereads two of Mark Twain’s late and most explicitly political but understudied texts involving non-human animals, the short story “A Dog’s Tale” (1903) and the novella A Horse’s Tale (1906), within an Anthropocene context. Although the texts came into existence long before the notion of the Anthropocene was around, the article argues that Twain’s sentimental anthropomorphism has relevance as Anthropocene critique and offers models for alternative narratives of the Anthropocene. After briefly introducing relevant historical and conceptual contexts, my analysis focuses on two specific facets of Twain’s narrative technique, spotlighting its potential as Anthropocene critique and for Anthropocene storytelling. On the one hand, the article shows that Twain’s sentimental anthropomorphism resonates with the Anthropocene by rescaling the imagination through its anthropomorphized people and arguing for an alternative, collective ethics of care that transcends species boundaries. On the other hand, I demonstrate how Twain’s technique allows for rethinking and troubling the caesurae of species and race as arbitrary constructions, which interlinks with recognizing the Anthropocene as (also) a racial process.