Sensory Experience as Consciousness in Literary Representations of Animal Minds

Abstract

S eabiscuit, the biography of a race horse who lived in the 1930s, is currently on the New Tork Times “Best Sellers” list. Its popularity is only the most recent evidence of adult interest in animal char-acters, particularly in representations of their mental life. Nevertheless, passages such as the following are apt to produce derision among some readers: “Seabiscuit had the misfortune of living in a stable whose man- agers simply didn’t have the time to give his mind the painstaking atten- tion it needed.”¹ Students of literature may assume that any text that attributes “mind” to an animal is anthropomorphic, even though they may not be quite sure what mind is.

I am very grateful to my brother, James Reed Smith, for his thoughtful reading of this essay and extensive, insightful comments.