Vol. 12 No. 2 (2024): “The identical horse of knowledge” – Mapping and Meaning for the Reader in Animal Autobiographies around 1800

Angelika Zirker (Universität Tübingen) & Sigrid Beck (Universität Tübingen)

In this paper, we propose an analysis of how the subjective interpretation of a fictional text is brought about on the basis of combining the formal approach to the pragmatics of fiction with literary analysis. Our corpus is the anonymously published horse autobiography Memoirs of Dick, the Little Poney from 1799/1800. In the autodiegetic narrative, Dick the pony speaks as a hurt animal, critically observes human behaviour with satiric intent, and inscribes himself into an abolitionist discourse. We will show how the co-existence of several possibilities to read and understand the text or, more formally, how Meanings for the Reader (MfR) is foregrounded by the genre of animal autobiography and aims at the (self-)recognition on behalf of the reader.