The purpose of this paper is to examine the role which animal narrators play in the it-narrative genre. This paper argues that the qualities of life and agency separate animal narrators from object narrators, making animal narrators especially capable of providing social critique thanks to animal narrators' naturally occupying a space between subject and object. This thesis marks the rising use of animal narrators and notes their narratological trends over a 62 period, showing the lingering influence of late-eighteenth-century models into mass-market periodicals of antebellum America and Victorian Britain. Chapters One and Two provides generic definitions and a brief consideration of animals in popular British culture and responds to key points of debate in the current it-narrative field by using Felissa or; The Life and Opinions of a Kitten of Sentiment (1811). Chapters Three and Four analyze related texts from before and after Felissa. Chapters Four and Five extend the discussion to shorter fiction in children's periodicals, taking the audience response to it-narratives into account. Highlighting the distinction between animal and non-animal narrators in these venues gives nuance to our understanding of the well-known "circulation" thematic in the it-narrative genre, while also calling attention to these narratives' less-studied but rigorous examinations of slavery, class difference, and colonialism.

Through a critical examination of the works of Tom Robbins, this thesis interrogates the historical evolution and appropriation of the magic(al) realist tradition. In so doing, it situates Robbins’ writing within the framework of postmodernism, and explores the ontological implications inherent in Robbins’ use of magic(al) realist concepts and conventions. With a specific emphasis on the notion of cultural consciousness, this thesis analyzes the object- oriented cosmologies embodied and espoused in three of Robbins’ novels: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Skinny Legs and All (1990), and B is for Beer (2009). It unpacks the ideological figuration of various textual devices evident in Another Roadside Attraction (1971) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976) – particularly the gendered use of unreliable narrators – and, with reference to Jitterbug Perfume (1984), relates Robbins’ appropriation of the magic(al) realist tradition to the American counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s. Employing poststructuralist, feminist, ecofeminist, and postcolonial discourses, this thesis ultimately seeks to position Robbins’ writing within the context of a radical emancipatory politics that views (and uses) literature as an ideological space in which to challenge, reinterpret, and democratize Western metanarratives.