Sammendrag
This thesis is an exploration of the connection between fiction literature and the ethics of the human treatment of the domesticated non-human animals who live their lives in constant relation to human society. The fiction literature which the thesis examines is “A Report to an Academy” by Franz Kafka, The Lives of Animals by J. M. Coetzee, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Through the discussion of these texts, I aim to demonstrate the importance and contribution of the thesis’ key concepts of form, discourse, world view, perspective and the concept of entangled empathy, in relation to the non-human oriented ethical potential of fiction literature. I hope to demonstrate the benefits of looking at empathic engagement in human-animal relations for the purpose of identifying the proper ethical course of action through the lens of entangled empathy. I believe the concept of entangled empathy to be ethically instructive in the case of human relations to the non-human sentient world, suggesting how human animals could approach, and reconsider, our relations to the world of non-human animals. By reading literature that provide alternative perspectives from which to explore the concept of species, humanity and animality, as readers we can discover our capabilities for extending notions of kinship and empathic engagement to the non-human animals.