Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21066/carcl.libri.10.1.1
Poems about Cats for Children and Adults: T.S. Eliot and Identity
Ljubica Matek
orcid.org/0000-0003-2373-2418
; Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera – Filozofski fakultet, Osijek, Hrvatska
Abstract
T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939) is a collection of poems for children marked by interpretative richness thanks to which the poems are widely read and known. This paper deals predominantly with issues of name, naming, and identity from the point of view of animal studies, suggesting that Eliot’s verses negate the anthropocentric hierarchy of living beings. Eliot’s treatment of the personified cats’ identities prompts the reader to think about cats in a more humane way. The lively descriptions of different cats and their lives suggest that their life is just as complex and valuable as human life, as cats seem to deal with similar existential issues. Thus, Eliot evokes what will only decades later be known as biocentric egalitarianism, posthumanism, and the theory of identity. While certain literary texts figure cats merely as symbols of good or bad luck, death, magic, and so on, in Eliot’s poems cats are full-blooded living beings sharing the earthly home with human and nonhuman beings.
Keywords
animal studies; biocentric egalitarianism; cats; identity; T.S. Eliot;
Hrčak ID:
261872
URI
Publication date:
31.8.2021.
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