Animals appear in many guises in Charles Dickens’s novels, as wild animals, domestic animals, animals used in the service of humans, and, not least, as images and symbols. Based on a close reading of all of Dickens’s major novels, this thesis centres on the symbolic use of (both metaphorical and actual) animals in the depiction of human characters, the chief aim being to explore a phenomenon that Dickens frequently resorts to, namely, the animalisation of human characters. Certain Dickensian characters are in fact more or less consistently compared to animals – to animals in general, or to specific animals. On occasion, not only individual characters but also groups of characters are animalised, and sometimes to the point of dehumanisation. By and large, being animalised equals being portrayed in a negative light, as if what Dickens himself at one point termed “the divine spark” – the special light accorded to the human brain as opposed to the animal brain – has been extinguished or has at least become almost imperceptible. Furthermore, in conjunction with the investigation of Dickens’s animalisation of human characters, the thesis discusses his implicit attitude to the human-animal divide and argues that, though largely anthropocentric and hierarchical, it also points to a view of human and nonhuman animals as part of a continuum, with no fixed boundaries. A number of different approaches inform the discussion, but theoretical frameworks such as ecocriticism and, above all, contemporary theory on the significance of Darwin’s ideas in the Victorian era, are foregrounded.

In 2000, Iraqi-born film director, poet and author Hassan Blasim fled Iraq to escape persecution for his films on the forced migration of Kurds by Saddam Hussein's regime. After travelling through Europe for four years, he was granted asylum in Finland. It was in Europe that many of his short stories were published, including Majnūn Sāḥat Al-ḥurrīya (2015) which offers a haunting critique of the war and post-war experiences of migrants fleeing Iraq and settling in Europe. This thesis is an investigation of how the migrant figure is dehumanised during the migration trajectory from displacement to integration through three of the short stories in Hassan Blasim’s Majnūn Sāḥat Al-ḥurrīya: Šāḥinat Barlīn (The Truck to Berlin), Al-ʾaršīf Wa-al-wāqiʿ (The Reality and the Record) and Kawābīs Kārlūs Fuwantis (The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes). This thesis uses close reading in order to highlight how the migrants in these short stories are depicted as ingenuine asylum claimants who cheat and perform to gain entry to the West and as terrorists or animals who are a threat to the cultural norms of the receiving nations. In this thesis, it is argued that it is these depictions and assumptions which lead to their negative treatment and societal rejection.

This thesis explores representations of wild nature in two Arthurian texts – one British and one American – produced in an age characterised by rapid social transformation: Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859-1885) and Howard Pyle’s Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903). By investigation of the textual descriptions of wilderness and the portrayals of characters living there, the study aims to investigate what attitudes towards unkempt nature are displayed in the two texts. While both narratives give evidence of a powerful nostalgia for a vanishing paradise, the yearning for Eden is expressed quite differently. Pyle’s text fuses the concepts of wilderness and paradise together by depicting the unkempt landscape as a place of splendour and spiritual enjoyment. Such a celebration of nature might well be seen a reaction against the rapid loss of wild spaces across America (and Britain) during the life-time of the author. In the Idylls, paradise is represented in the domesticated yet green landscape of the faraway fairy island of Avilion. Wilderness, on the other hand, is depicted as a harmful disease progressively spreading across the realm, arguably bringing about a moral degeneration among the human characters. In the end, however, it is not wilderness, but the corruption of the supposedly civilised characters that causes the collapse of Arthur’s empire. On closer inspection, the real danger thus seems to come from culture and material conditions rather than from nature.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de montrer un des impacts de l'esclavage sur l'histoire des peuples africains et leurs descendants. Comment ce fait a pu façonner la vie spirituelle des diasporas des Amériques, et en particulier du Brésil, et de quelle manière ces différentes populations ont su dialoguer entre elles, mais aussi s'approprier et transformer les valeurs culturelles des peuples qui les ont soumis. Tout en s'adaptant à ces nouveaux contextes, elles ont préservé leurs mémoires spirituelles en créant des intermédiaires cultuels comme l'entité du Seja Hundê, Candomblé jeje de Bahia, le vudum Lebabimibome, qui fusionne le singe et le Messager des religions ancestrales fon et yorouba Eshu-Legba. Par l'adoption de cette nouvelle manifestation religieuse, elles ont également su recycler l'image utilisée par les colonisateurs à l'encontre des Africains, associé à des singes et décrit comme un chaînon manquant entre l'homme et l'animal, ainsi des individus ont pu échapper à l'esclavage en refusant l'usage de parole. Aussi, par la ruse des singes des contes populaires, l'histoire sociale des esclaves et des libres subalternes vivant dans cette société est racontée ce qui constitue une archive de l'époque. / This dissertation aims to show how the enslavement of African peoples on the African continent and in the Americas has deeply influenced the spiritual and intellectual lives of Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora, particularly in Brazil. African peoples learned from the beginning how to dialogue with other Africans ethnicities and how to assess the cultural values being imposed by those people who dominated them. They could transform those values to their needs. Also they managed to safeguard their ancestral spiritual heritage, creating a vudu, known as Lebabimibome, merged with the Messenger of the Fon/Yoruba religion Eshu-Legba, and with a monkey. In this way they wittingly illustrated the European idea that Africans were the missing link between men and monkeys. Some Africans strategically accepted this image and used it to escape slavery by refusing to use spoken words in their relationship with Europeans and Native Americans. By using the monkey's guile, as described in these animal tales, the oral tradition could integrate the hermeneutical aspect of Eshu-Legba to translate the social history of the enslaved and subaltern peoples within these fables which function as archives in Brazilian society. / O objetivo desta tese é de demonstrar um dos impactos da escravidão na historia de povos africanos e afrodescendentes, de como este fato marcou a vida espiritual e intelectual das diasporas nas Américas, e da brasileira em especial Também, teatamos mostrar como estas populações souberam dialogar primeiramente entre elas e em seguida apropriar-se e transformar e transformar os valores culturais dos povos que os subjugaram Ao mesmo tempo que adaptavam aos novos contextos, estas populações souberam preservar suas memorias espirituais e conseguiram criar intermediarios sagrados como aquele do Seja Hundê, Candomblé Jeje da Bahia, o vudum Lebabimibome, hibrido do Messageiro das religiões ancestrais fon e ioruba Exu-Legba e de um macaco Pela adoção desta nova manifestação religiosa, esses povos souberam estrategicament reciclar ao mesmo tempo uma velha idéia construida pelos colonizadores sobre os africanos, que os associavam aos macacos, que eles eram o elo que ligava o homem ao animal, mas para poder escapar à escravidão certos grupos africanos utilizaram a mimica como meio de comunicação com os estrangeiros; por outro lado pelas artimanhas dos macacos dos contos populares, a vida social dos escravos e dos livres subalternos desta sociedade é também contada, transformando-os em arquivos de suas épocas